Can "thinking" too much cause my headaches?

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I have had headaches as long as I can remember. I think constantly and it seems my brain never stops. I have had trouble getting to sleep because of this. Is there anything I can do to alleviate the irritating throbbing? Someone told me once to take melatonin to "trick" myself into sleeping. Does that work?

I've always had a lot of headaches... and I've always had immense trouble getting to sleep because my mind kept running. But I don't think the two are directly connected. Well, if you're continually overtired, that will contribute to a headache. Nothing puts me to sleep (dentist once prescribed a painkiller so powerful "you'll have to be careful or you'll fall asleep sitting up" - the stuff kept me awake for forty-eight hours straight; generally, things that make most people sleepy wake me up), so I can't comment on the melatonin.

My own advice, on the headaches and the sleep issues, is as follows:

For sleep issues, learn about sleep patterns, "rituals" to help you out, then work on setting a realistic schedule to get enough sleep. Exercise is a good way to tire yourself out. If your mind is full of ideas (I'm a writer, so I get tons of them) you could keep a pad and pen by your bed to get them out of your head so you're not trying to remember them all. At least, this is a problem for me... I've had to learn to time my meals and my other routines, stick to a sleep schedule that will work for me, all sorts of things. They help a decent amount. I don't tend to get headaches from being overtired any more unless something external and beyond my control wakes me up in the middle of the night.

For headaches, the single best piece of advice I ever got was to drink whenever I have a headache. Water, juice, Emergen-C are all good. Emergen-C will replace some of your electrolytes if that is part of what is causing your problems, and water or anything else will take care of dehydration. A lot of headaches are due to dehydration - that's all a hangover is, a massive dehydration headache - and many more are helped along by it. Try to figure out what triggers your headaches. Sometimes it will be certain foods, sometimes it will be too much glare or too little light, sometimes it will be smells that set your sinuses off. Allergies will get your sinuses going, too. Tension is another big cause of headaches; try Rescue Remedy if you think that may be it. And sometimes those minty oils or rubs they sell for migraines (you rub them on your temples) work better than you might imagine. Eye strain will give you headaches, too. I get a lot of that.

In fact, in case you haven't guessed it, I get headaches from just about every possible cause imaginable. Pay attention to what the headache feels like, and you can learn to tell what is causing it. A sinus headache will feel like pressure towards your eyes or face, if it is an ear problem, the focus of the pain will be in the side of your head, eye strain is pretty easy, because your eyes will feel tired. Dehydration is easy to recognise once you get used to it, but harder to describe. So is a headache from carbon monoxide poisoning. (Had those twice. Awful, worse than most migraines.) The ones that are hardest to figure out are the ones that have several causes interacting with each other, so you're feeling something "mixed" and not one clear signal.

I get headaches when I get low on potassium. Especially when traveling, I have to make sure to eat bananas, walnuts, or just a lot of vegetables.

I used to get sinus headaches, until I started using a neti pot.

I also had a serious misalignment of my atlas vertebra (the top one). Some Chiropractors helped, some did nothing, but the most effective has been a ProAdjuster Chiropractor. Sadly, she believes in a lot of unverifiable and discredited pseudoscience, as I imagine a lot of chiropractors do, so I don't give her high ratings for credibility outside the strict limits of chiropracty.

Lots of things can cause headaches for me, but I've never noticed one concurrent with my mind racing unusually hard.

I don't think so. If I get a headache, its almost always a result of sensory overload (or emotional overload). I have never got a headache because I was thinking too hard about something. I enjoy thinking about things, and I couldn't ever stop if I wanted to.

I thought about the sensory overload thing too. I get one almost everyday. My 5 year old has AS and is a seeker. I must have massive patience and control. I wish I knew how to deal with him sometimes. Before I discovered AS I just thought he was doing weird repetitious things to annoy me personally. Now that I know it's not intentional, it's a little easier. The biggest problem is his high pitch repetitous noises. I have tried using my IPOD to drown him out, but then he just comes over and starts tapping me (which is very painful) and trying to get my attention every 2 minutes. I end up giving up because I have to keep taking the earbuds out. Homework is crazy because he jumps up every 5 seconds to "do something" or "get something" or give his baby sister a kiss. He kisses EVERYTHING, from inanimate objects and food to strangers and himself constantly. I can tell him not to do something a million times and it doesn't matter. He's very sweet and good natured. I'm just lost and my headaches won't go away. lol

If I had to guess, I'd say a lot of your problem right now is tension headaches. There may be other factors, but you've got a lot of tension going on, and that is bound to trigger a lot of headaches. Try drinking more; no, it won't stop a tension headache, but it will remove any possibility of dehydration. (I got this tip from a friend with migraines so bad he has a regular neurologist - and the first advice the neurologist gave him was to drink more.) Then, try the Rescue Remedy pastilles. Those sometimes work for tension headaches. And you could try various relaxation techniques, or the minty rubs for your temples. Caffeine works for some of my headaches, but be careful - if you get hooked on it, you'll develop headaches if you don't get enough.

Sometimes when I'm thinking hard, my entire body can be tensed up; shoulders, neck, forehead, face. People often think I'm in a bad mood when I'm thinking.

Anyway, yes.

Check for a brain infection or encephalitis.

I caught headaches once from a girlfriend, they can be viral, fungal and/or bacterial

Otherwise thick blood is the most common cause of headaches, drinking enough water keeps it thin

mild but chronic deydration can lead to frequent headaches too, so drink alot of water for a week to see if that elievates it before getting drastic.

Yes you can. Headaches are relatively common in people with autism. It's not necessarily pain in the head, but that feeling that your head is so full it's about to burst open. Autism is about the processing of information from the outer world. After a long busy day, your head is just so full of unprocessed information that it drives you nuts. What I do is distract myself a little bit before going to sleep. Do something that occupies your mind, yet does not require a lot of energy. What works for me is watching a movie or an episode of a series before going to sleep. You just need your distraction and your rest...

When I was a kid, I used to get a headache after doing math homework, since it required my brain to think in ways it simply cannot think, no matter how hard I try. These days, I get headaches from stress and sensory overload such as prolonged loud noise/music.