One sided headaches

[ClovisM]

For a while now I've been having headaches on the right side of my head. They used to come on spontaneously and now it seems anything can triger one. Exercise triggers them and as someone who wants to be healthy, this worries me. Recently I've also started to hear my heartbeat in my right ear. I can almost feel it pulsing. It's not constant and sometimes it happens if I just lay down in a certain position. I also have slightly blurred vision in the right eye when this happens and it almost feels swollen (Though i can see no change from the outside.)

I want to go out running again but I worry I could injur myself (Or that I might have an aneurysm..) I want to know I'm safe to get my heart racing before I risk heavy cardio.

[ClovisM]

I went to a doctor who said that my symptoms raised a lot of red flags. She ordered an MRI which I did today. The Neurologist spent ten minutes looking at my results and said that everything looked normal. From here I just need to follow up with my doctor and see what direction to go in from here.

[Ball123]

Hi!

I have sort of the same and it is so frustrating to not be able to live an active lifestyle. I have migraine, so that is my problem. It gets a little bit better if I warm up ambitiously and increase slowly.

As I said, for me it is migraine so maybe it is the same for you. This thing where you hear your pulse in the head is called pulsatile tinnitus. It can be arterial or venous. Arterial if it is right on time with the heartbeat and venous if it is in between. I have arterial. A common cause of this is something called arterio-venous dural fistulae, which is basically that an artery is connected immediately to a vein. My doc listened with the stethoscope on the bone behind my ear. If it would have been a dural fistulae he would have heard my heart beat then. He didn't, so that ruled it out. Ask your doctor and maybe he/she can do the same test on you?

If it would be venous, which I don't think is your case, it could also be due to increased pressure in the skull. This can come from a number of things. Don't think you need to worry about that.

But since you also have blurry vision it could be good to do a brain scan, either ct or MRI. Just to rule out a lot of nasty stuff. But ask your doctor, maybe he/she won't feel that it's necessary.

Aneurysms don't really give symptoms like this, they usually don't give symptoms at all.

If you would have had constant pain it could also have been hemicrania continua but now you didn't. And of coarse it can be good to check if you have an infection in your ear. But I think most important is to have your doc check for the dural fistulae.

Do you have a good doctor that you can see? Or maybe a neurologist? Or an ENT?

Please let us know how it goes, ok?:)

Take care!