Collinsville patients are treated at the Headache Express clinic in St. Louis, Missouri. The first job is naming the headache correctly: migraine, tension-type, neck-driven, jaw-driven or nerve pain after dental work, because each one takes a different treatment.
Collinsville sits near the junction of the interstates that carry most of the Illinois-side traffic west, which makes the run to Woodson Road on the Missouri side a short one outside of rush hour.
How do you tell if it’s a migraine or a tension headache?
The two most common headache types are routinely confused, in both directions. Tension-type headache is typically a dull, pressing band on both sides, mild to moderate, not made worse by walking upstairs, without nausea or light sensitivity. Migraine is more often one-sided, throbbing, moderate to severe, aggravated by ordinary activity, with nausea or sensitivity to light and sound.
The practical consequence of getting it wrong is years of the wrong treatment. Someone treating migraine as a stress headache with over-the-counter tablets several days a week is on a path to a worse problem, not a stable one. The full comparison is in migraine or tension-type headache.
Can a long drive or screen posture cause headaches?
Sustained postures — a long drive, a screen at the wrong height — load the neck muscles, and the neck feeds directly into the same pain pathway as the head. In frequent headache the neck is involved far more often than it is examined, and treating it changes the picture more than people expect. See is my headache coming from my neck.
Can jaw clenching cause headaches?
Clenching, whether from stress or overnight grinding, produces pain in the temple that reads exactly like a tension headache. It is one of the most commonly missed contributors and takes about two minutes to check — see TMJ as a missed cause of headache.
Why does my face hurt after dental work?
A distinct group arrives having dated the whole problem to a dental procedure. Sometimes the tooth is genuinely the source and the work was incomplete. Frequently it is not, and repeated dental intervention on a nerve problem makes things worse while the original complaint is untouched.
Persistent facial pain after dental treatment, particularly burning or electrical pain in a nerve distribution rather than aching localized to one tooth, points away from the tooth. Post-dental facial pain covers how that is assessed, and where a trigeminal branch is implicated a trigeminal nerve block is both diagnostic and therapeutic.
Tension headache is a real diagnosis and a badly overused one
Tension-type headache exists and is common. It is also the label applied by default to any headache that is not obviously migraine, which is how people spend years on the wrong treatment for a cervicogenic or occipital problem.
The distinctions are checkable rather than a matter of opinion: side, duration, what makes it worse, whether there is nausea or light sensitivity, and whether pressing a specific structure reproduces it. Migraine versus tension headache lays out the separation, and tension headache treatment covers what actually helps when the label is correct.
Where the neck is the driver, treating it as tension misses it entirely — see is my headache coming from my neck.
Does caffeine help or cause headaches?
Caffeine treats headache and causes it, which is why it appears in acute combination products and also in the history of people whose headaches have become daily. The withdrawal headache from a consistent intake is real, predictable, and easy to mistake for the underlying disorder getting worse.
For a commuting population that runs on it, this matters. Regularity is more important than quantity: a stable intake is manageable, while a weekday-heavy pattern manufactures a withdrawal headache every weekend. Preventing migraine and headache covers both directions.
Pain around one eyebrow after an old injury
A specific and easily missed one: persistent burning or shooting pain above one eye, sometimes with numbness or an oddly sensitive patch of scalp, dating from a blow or a laceration to the brow — occasionally years earlier.
That is a supraorbital nerve problem rather than a headache disorder, and it is treated as such. It gets carried as migraine for a long time because it is one-sided and involves the eye. Supraorbital neuralgia after a brow injury describes the presentation.
Driving home afterward
There is no sedation for any of the procedures on this site, and you drive yourself home. That is deliberate: sedation would mean arranging a driver for a forty-minute trip, and it is not necessary for the work being done.
Numbness at the back of the head or over the scalp is expected after an occipital block and wears off across several hours. It is disconcerting the first time and it is not a complication.
What changes after the first visit
Most people leave with a working diagnosis and one thing to change, not a list of six. That is deliberate: changing several variables at once means that when something improves, nobody knows which change did it.
The follow-up interval is set by what was started. A preventive needs weeks before it can be judged; a block is assessed much sooner. Either way the review date is agreed at the first visit rather than left open.
For patients further south in St. Clair County, headache treatment for Belleville covers the sinus headache that turns out to be migraine.
Common questions
How can I tell which type I have?
Track whether ordinary activity makes it worse, and whether light, sound or nausea come with it. Those three questions separate the two better than severity does — see migraine or tension-type headache.
I take something most days for it. Is that a problem?
Probably yes. Simple analgesics cross the overuse threshold around fifteen days a month and combination products much sooner — see medication-overuse headache.
Is tension-type headache treatable here?
Yes, and the first step is confirming that is what it is. See tension headache treatment or get in touch.
Can a migraine mimic a tension headache?
Yes, and the two are confused in both directions. Tension-type headache is the label applied by default to any headache that is not obviously migraine. Someone treating migraine as a stress headache with over-the-counter tablets several days a week is heading toward a worse problem. Migraine is more often one-sided and throbbing, worse with ordinary activity, and comes with nausea or sensitivity to light and sound.
Can a tension headache come from your neck?
Often the neck is the real driver. Sustained postures, such as a long drive or a screen at the wrong height, load the neck muscles, and the neck feeds into the same pain pathway as the head. When a neck-driven headache is labeled tension headache, treatment misses the source. Pressing a specific structure to see whether it reproduces the pain is one of the checks that separates them.
Can you drive yourself home after a headache procedure?
Yes. None of the procedures on this site use sedation, so you drive yourself home and do not need to arrange a driver for a forty-minute trip. Numbness at the back of the head or over the scalp is expected after an occipital block and wears off over several hours. It feels strange the first time, and it is not a complication.