Tension Headache vs. Migraine: Everything You Need to Know

glamour.com:

, assistant professor of neurology and headache medicine specialist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “It's a complicated neurobiological process that involves electrical changes and inflammation that lead to head pain”—but also many symptoms that a tension headache doesn't have, including nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light and sound, dizziness, vision changes, neck pain, or difficulty focusing or concentrating.

If you don’t have those symptoms and your headache lasts less than four hours, there's a good chance you're dealing with a tension-type headache, not a migraine.Pace says (as anyone living with migraine knows) a migraine attack can be more severe and even disabling, to the point that it can prevent a person in the throes of one from going to work or socializing—or even getting out of bed. “Some people have more complex neurologic symptoms with their migraine attacks, including vision loss, eye strain, tingling or numbness, weakness on one side, and even difficulty speaking.” she says.Unlike tension headaches, migraine attacks often occur in multiple phases, but the most notable difference, according to the American Migraine Foundation, is the  severe head pain and associated symptoms that can make it difficult or impossible to function during a migraine attack.A final distinction: Tension-type headaches tend to be sporadic, where many migraine patients can experience several attacks a month.