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
Tests and diagnosis
By Mayo Clinic staffYour doctor will likely recommend an imaging test, especially if:
- Your headaches last more than a few hours
- Your headaches strike suddenly, like a thunderclap
- You're older than age 40
- You have other signs and symptoms, such as nausea, vomiting or vision disturbances
In these cases, different types of imaging tests can help your doctor verify that you have the harmless variety of exercise headache, rather than the type caused by a structural or vascular abnormality.
- Computerized tomography (CT). CT uses X-rays to generate a cross-sectional image of your brain. CT can show bleeding into or around the brain and is often used if your headache occurred less than 48 hours beforehand.
- Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This test uses a magnetic field and radio waves to create cross-sectional images of the structures within your brain.
- Magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) and CT angiography. These tests visualize the blood vessels leading to and inside your brain.
Sometimes a spinal tap (lumbar puncture) is needed as well, especially if the headache started abruptly and very recently and brain imaging appears normal.
- Headache: Hope through research. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/headache/detail_headache.htm#142883138. Accessed Dec. 7, 2009.
- Cutrer FM. Primary exertional headache. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Dec. 8, 2009.
- Goadsby PJ, et al. Headaches. In: Fauci AS, et al. Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine. 17th ed. New York, N.Y.: The McGraw-Hill Companies; 2008. http://www.accessmedicine.com/content.aspx?aID=2890365. Accessed Dec. 8, 2009.
- Pasqual J. Other primary headaches. Neurologic Clinics. 2009;27:557.
- Primary exertional headache. International Headache Society. http://ihs-classification.org/en/02_klassifikation/02_teil1/04.03.00_other.html. Accessed Dec. 8, 2009.
- Bartleson JD (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. Dec. 22, 2009.
Find Mayo Clinic on