Kids' Headaches May Increase At Back-To-School Time
ByNew research suggests that headaches increase in children at back-to-school time, CBS News reported.
Physicians from Nationwide Children's Hospital found a 31 percent jump in the fall. They believe this trend might be due to back-to-school changes in stress, bedtime routines and sleep.
"Stress is really a significant player with children's and teen's headaches -- parents report that all the time, we see that all the time," Dr. Ann Pakalnis, lead researcher of the study, said in a video posted by the hospital. "And school is the biggest stressor."
For the study, researchers analyzed about 1,300 emergency department visits from 2010 to 2014. Based on their findings, they concluded that when monthly emergency department visits are grouped seasonally, there is an increase in headaches in the fall in children ages five to 18 years old.
"We see a lot of headaches in young boys, from five to nine years of age, and in boys they tend to get better in later adolescence," Pakalnis, also a professor of Clinical Pediatrics and Neurology at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, said in a statement. "In teenage girls, migraines oftentimes make their first presentation around the time of puberty and unfortunately tend to persist into adulthood."
The two types of primary headaches seen most often by physicians are tension headaches and migraines. While migraines are less common in children, they are far more severe in regards to the pain that children experience. Migraines are generally associated with nausea and vomiting, and sensitivity to light, sound and smell. Contrarily, tension headaches tend to feel more like tightening around the head, and children can continue with their normal day despite the discomfort.
Researchers said the increase in fall headaches may be attributed to a number of factors, including "the stress of going back to school," schedule changes and an increase in extracurricular activity, WWMT News reported.
Other common headache triggers include lack of adequate sleep, skipping meals, poor hydration, too much caffeine, lack of exercise and prolonged electronic screen time.