Before I begin and provide you with the essence of this article, I wish to briefly digress and show you one way we measure barometric pressure. This may be important to understand the mechanism why barometric pressure headaches and migraines are triggered by air pressure changes.
Please read the brief excerpt from a Wikipedia article:
“An aneroid barometer uses a small, flexible metal box called an aneroid cell. The box is tightly sealed after some of the air is removed, so that small changes in external air pressure cause the cell to expand or contract. This expansion and contraction drives mechanical levers and other devices which are displayed on the face of the aneroid barometer. Many models include a manually set needle which is used to mark the current measurement so a change can be seen.”
Our body has many chambers and cavities, which are permanently, and sometimes temporarily, sealed from the outside world. While they are no vacuums, they may contain air or fluids. Take our middle ear, for example. A small tube, the Eustachian tube, connects the chamber of the middle ear with the nasal cavity allowing air pressure changes to equalize.
Sometimes this tube is blocked when a person has a cold or some other infection. The pressure can’t equalize and the ear may become quite painful when the air pressure outside rapidly changes, such as when an aircraft descends for landing.
Our head is one large cavity, filled with fluids and the brain, and with smaller cavities of sealed chambers, such as the blood vessels. As the aneroid cell in the barometer, the sealed cavities are subject to expansion and contraction when the outside air pressure changes.
There is much discussion in the medical science community on what triggers migraines and headaches: are widening blood vessels a trigger, or are they just the result of a different process. Other weather factors, or a combination of them, may also prove to be the cause of the onset of headache or migraine.
The fact is, research and surveys consistently found that many patients are suffering from barometric pressure headaches or migraines whenever the air pressure rapidly changes. In one such study, 75% of migraine patients reported that they ”suffered the debilitating headaches on days with atmospheric pressure increases.”
If you think you are one of the many victims of barometric pressure headaches, try to keep track of the type of weather you experienced during the pain episodes. It may also be a good idea to purchase a barometer to prove to you that a rapid pressure change occurred during your headache or migraine.
We aim to provide you with warnings of any rapid barometric pressure changes that may occur in the forecast period, and of other weather events, which are also known migraine or headache triggers.
© Copyright Manfred Kaiser 2007
Barometric Pressure Headache
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