What do I do for my Sinus Headaches?

Patients often ask, “What do I do to treat my sinus headache?” The question that really needs to be asked, “Do I truly have a sinus headache?” Patients may actually experience a true acute sinusitis which is often associated with an elevated temperature, and nasal drainage that can be of various colorations such as yellow, green or brown. But often times if people note that their sinus symptoms only last for two or three days and occur several times a month whether or not they take medications including antibiotics; what we have found with research is that about 61 percent of patients who self-diagnosis themselves with sinus headache symptoms actually turned out to have migraine. Now how could this be.

See migraine has very complex components and in some patients what happens is they get an inflammation that somewhat mimics an acute sinusitis where they actually will experience nasal pressure, actually some nasal pain, nasal congestion, rhinoria which is essentially a clear or white drainage. Sometimes they even report some eye tearing and some itching of the nose and we can see it’s clear that they confuse these symptoms with that of an acute sinusitis. So the first thing to do is to get the diagnosis correct. If it truly is acute sinusitis appropriate therapy needs to be given; you would have to consult your physician or allied healthcare professional to determine the cause and use appropriate treatment for this acute sinusitis. But if it turned out to be migraine, then appropriate treatments for migraine discussed in another section of this website need to be addressed

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