Throbbing and tenderness in your nose, cheeks and/or eyebrows seem to be clear indicators of a sinus headache. Most likely they aren’t. 90% of what patients think are sinus headaches are actually untreated migraines.
[Headache specialist Eric] Eross and colleagues advertised a free evaluation to people suffering from “sinus headaches.” They signed up the first 100 people, and gave them a rigorous 1.5-hour evaluation. It turned out 90 of the 100 patients were really suffering from migraines.
Sinus headaches do exist, but they are much rarer than people believe.
If you have an active sinus infection, your head hurts. Typical symptoms include fever, swollen lymph nodes, and a green or yellow nasal discharge. But most people who think they have sinus headaches don’t have these symptoms — just pain high in their cheeks. They likely have migraines, Eross says.
Following the study, about half the participants who thought they had sinus headaches became Dr. Eross’s patients. Most of them improved dramatically with migraine treatment.
Sinus headache was one of my early self-diagnoses. I can’t tell you how many allergists, ENTs and ENT surgeons I saw. I underwent numerous tests and scans and tried meds and allergy shots, but nothing showed that I had sinus headaches. That didn’t stop me from having nasal surgery for my headaches, which was completely ineffective.
My migraines don’t fit the symptoms of what most people think of as migraine: I didn’t have a visual aura, one-sided pain, nausea or sensitivity to light. Turns out that this describes “classic migraine” (or migraine with aura) which about 40% of people with migraine have symptoms of. Much more common is migraine without aura, often called “common migraine.”
Because of this, getting the right diagnosis was difficult for me. My experience makes me want to tell everyone who has “sinus headaches” that they could have another kind of headache disorder. Since this is my blog, I will. Please consider that your headaches aren’t sinus-related.