Diagnosing a headache should be the simplest thing in the world because nearly all adults suffer from them and when you have one you surely know about it.
However, despite the clear pain, diagnosing a headache is a bit more difficult than you might suppose.
Astonishingly there are no general and definitive tests when it comes to diagnosing headaches and if you think you are suffering from a headache and are experiencing pain then all you can really do is to tell your physician how you are feeling and he has to produce a diagnosis on the basis of whatever you say.
One major problem however is that when talking about symptoms descriptions can vary wildly.
Some people simply are not as eloquent as others when talking about what they feel and our frequently limited vocabulary does not always help us either.
Saying that you have a 'sharp pain' might seem like a very expressive description to you but it does not necessarily help your physician too much.
As if all of this was not bad enough diagnosis is made more difficult because headaches have a number of different types.
Tension headaches which arise from inflamed facial or neck muscles and dilated head blood vessels amongst other things do not generally get diagnosed by a physician as most people simply treat them with painkillers or simply wait until they fade.
Migraines, by contrast, are far worse and are more likely to lead to a visit to your physician although even here about fifty percent of sufferers do not ask for professional help.
Physicians are able to make use of several factors in order to diagnose a particular type of headache and recommend an appropriate treatment and, even though the pain felt is subjective, the type of pain is indicative of the type of headache.
Migraines, for example, as a rule produce severe throbbing or pulsating sensations while in tension headaches the pain is usually more regular and diffuse.
Migraine headaches are also generally accompanied by nausea as well as sensitivity to sound and light, cold extremities and a number of other signs that sufferers will recognize.
And, as these symptoms tend to be more or less the same from one sufferer to another, physicians have an objective group of symptoms on which they are able to form a proper diagnosis.
Cluster headaches are characterized by a powerful pain behind the eye or temple that lasts for about 30 minutes to one hour and then re-occur the next day at approximately the same time.
Cluster headaches can go on for a number of weeks and, once more as they are fairly regular, physicians have something on which to base a diagnosis.
In instances where a headache is the effect of a serious underlying condition like a brain tumor, physicians are able to identify this without undue difficulty.
For example, CT or MRI scans can reveal well known patterns that can link the headache to the underlying physical problem.
Headaches which tend to worsen over time also provide physicians with a clue, as do rapidly shifting patterns of pain, and this could for example indicate an aneurysm (a weakened blood vessel) as the underlying cause.
Diagnosing headaches is a complicated business as a result of many different types of headache and the variety of symptoms.
Nevertheless the secret in all cases is to gather as much objective information as is possible from both the sufferer and clinical tests.