Headaches affect almost everyone at some point in their life. Recurrent headaches affect about 10% of people, and vary widely in their intensity and the severity of the underlying conditions that cause them.
Most headaches occur because specific pain-sensitive structures in or around the head are overstimulated or damaged . Some of these structures are found within the skull or intracranial; the rest is in the tissues that surround or cover the skull, or extracranial.
An intracranial headache is the result of dilation of the arterial blood vessels at the base of the brain caused by a temporary increase in the blood supply. An intracranial headache can result from a fever, a hangover, or a sudden, severe attack of high blood pressure.
Ultimately, the headache can be caused by multiple reasons. And one of them is sexual activity. Here are five facts about headache and sex that you may not have known about.
1. According to the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN) , on rare occasions sexual activity by itself can trigger a headache without any apparent cause to justify it. According to data managed by the SEN, this phenomenon can occur at some point in life in up to 1% of the population.
2. Primary headaches related to sexual activity affect men in 80% of cases. In 75% of the cases they are orgasmic headaches , characterized by being very intense and sudden headaches that occur just during orgasm, while 25% correspond to pre-orgasmic headaches , identifiable by a dull pain in the head and the neck associated with contraction of the muscles of the neck or jaw, which develops gradually during sexual activity and increases with arousal.
3. The average duration of pre-orgasmic and orgasmic headaches can range from as little as 1 minute to 3 hours , although some mild residual pain may remain for several more hours.
4. According to a study by the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, people with migraines have higher levels of sexual desire than those with other types of headaches. Apparently the relationship is that both phenomena – migraine and sexual desire – are linked to low levels of serotonin.
5. Many of the drugs commonly used in migraine and other headaches can negatively affect sexual function and therefore the quality of sexual life. According to a study coordinated by the SEN a few years ago, at least 20% of patients undergoing treatment for migraines reported a clear decrease in sexual desire and up to 45% of them claimed to have suffered from a medication-related sexual disorder occasionally.
