Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Causes
By Mayo Clinic staffThe exact cause or causes of tension headache are unknown. Experts used to think that the pain of tension headache stemmed from muscle contraction in the face, neck and scalp, perhaps as a result of heightened emotions, tension or stress. But research suggests that there doesn't appear to be a significant increase in muscle tension in people diagnosed with tension headache.
Changes in brain chemicals
Researchers now suspect that tension headache may result from changes among certain brain chemicals — serotonin, endorphins and numerous other chemicals — that help nerves communicate. Although it's not clear why the chemical levels fluctuate, the process is thought to activate pain pathways to the brain and to interfere with the brain's ability to suppress the pain.
Triggers
It's likely other factors also contribute to the development of tension headaches. Potential triggers may include:
- Stress
- Depression and anxiety
- Poor posture
- Working in awkward positions or holding one position for a long time
- Jaw clenching
