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	Headaches are an almost everyday problem. More than two thirds of the population suffer, at least part of the time, from headaches. Some are even plagued with chronic headaches. Nausea, dizziness, impaired vision or speech can be unpleasant side effects. But one headache isn't quite like another. Scientists have identified 165 different types of headaches, where tension headaches and migraine attacks are responsible for roughly 92 percent of all headaches. On average they cause more than 30 sick days a year.     The people most frequently affected are those of middle age (20 to 40 years of age), following an occupation carried out in a writing-and-sitting fashion. Occasionally appearing tension headaches are experienced above all at the temples, forehead and around the neck region by those affected. Attacks can last for a few minutes upwards to, in the worst case, several days, and are felt as pressuring, pushing, pulling pains. The pains are described as "a weight bearing down on the head", as "a tight, pinching headband" or as "a dull, empty feeling". Relatively little is know about the formation of headaches. Pain is relayed to the blood vessels and fine connective tissue on the brain's surface via free nerve endings. Brain tissue itself is not pain-receptive. Pain mediators possibly cause a kind of inflammation of the nerves which is then transmitted to the vessels of the meninges. Among the typical triggers are tensions of the musculature of head-, shoulder- and neck areas. But stress, change in the weather, poor eating habits or a raised alcohol consumption can also be triggers. Primary headaches are seen as a clinical picture of its own that can be treated directly. Secondary or symptomatic headaches, in contrast, are the symptom of another underlying sickness, the treatment of which takes precedence. When headaches persist for no evident reason, it is advisable to seek medical advice.