Pain at the top of your head can be caused by fibromyalgia, and a top fibromyalgia doctor explains why and what to do about it.
“Fibromyalgia can cause a host of different pains, most often from muscle pain and sometimes from nerve pain,” including that at the top of the head, says Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, medical director of the Fibromyalgia and Fatigue Centers nationally, and author of “The Fatigue and Fibromyalgia Solution.”
What does the pain at the top of the head feel like to fibromyalgia patients?
“The nerve pain is characterized by sharp electric shooting type pains,” says Dr. Teitelbaum.
“Most of the other pains are associated with what are called ‘trigger points’ which are the ‘bunched up bellies’ of tight muscles or tender points where the tight muscles attach to the bones,” he continues.
The discomfort at the top of the head, which can also be described as the crown of the skull, is actually referred from an origin point that’s located at the base of your skull at the back of the neck.
In other words, the location of discomfort is distal from the origin of the problem.
The origin, at the base of the skull, back of the neck in those with fibromyalgia, consists of tight muscles — the tightness being “where they attach at the base of the skull in the back of the neck,” says Dr. Teitelbaum.
“This refers pain to the crown of the skull and behind the eyes.”
is a board certified internist and nationally known expert in the fields of fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, sleep and pain.
