What causes headache on one side with acidity? - Dr. Sanjay Gupta

Headache is a very common symptom of the patients coming to the hospital and the headache can be classified and categorized in many different ways. It is also very challenging for the doctor to find the cause of the headache and to investigate an d treat it .Most of the cases can come with unilateral headache and bilateral headache and the commonest fall into a category called as migraine. As everybody knows that migraine has got various aspects, various symptoms and various precipitating signs, various manifestations and various types of treatment. But it is a diagnosis of exclusion and we have to find out that what I causing the headache, what is triggering it and what is the best possible fate of treatment. Now it is very commonly seen that people have upper GI distress and lower GI symptoms associated with headache. Bu it is quite difficult to say that what is the cause and effect. Some will say that they had a headache and then they developed acidity. Some will say they had acidity and then developed headache. It is a matter of how we understand the patient and treat his condition from his headache and upper GI distress, called as acidity, most common symptoms in patients. When you correlate it, then a lot of physiology comes in between like for example sympathetic stimulation of the upper GI and the neurovascular system, is one of the very common manifestations of how you look at the cause of this problem. But many people say that they have taken an antacid or a proton pump inhibitor and they have got relieved of headache. But eventually you are allowing the stomach to feel better, you are allowing the stomach to have a good gastric emptying time, you are allowing the small intestine to function normally when you take these medicines for dyspepsia. Dyspepsia involves a lot of symptoms of people coming with headache and it is not only monotherapy. So we say that when we deal with headaches and with people who say they have acidity, it is not a monotherapy. It is a polytherapy. We have to give a combination of medicines. And most important of the most precipitating factors is stress. Stress is the most important culprit of people who come with these two problems and we should not take this lightly as these people coming with these symptoms worsening can also signal other diseases, other morbid diseases which should be diagnosed in time. So I would suggest that medical practitioner should be involved when these symptoms come frequently in combination.