If you're one of the millions of Americans who suffer from frequent severe headaches, you should know that specialists now believe that some of the medicines used to stop headache pain, if taken too often, may actually make headaches worse. Prescription painkillers, as well as over-the-counter remedies, may cause headaches to become more severe and more frequent if you take them more than two or three times a week.

Leading headache specialists say they have largely rejected long-standing beliefs that most headaches start in the muscles or blood vessels of the head, or in the psyche or emotions. They're now convinced that most headaches start in the brain. In people who get headaches very frequently, they probably result from some abnormality in brain chemistry that is probably inherited.

Migraine, the dreaded arch-villain of headache, is now considered by many to be simply the extreme end of the general headache spectrum, and not entirely different from common headaches. Mild daily headaches may simply be a form of migraine, which at its worst can bring nausea, vomiting and vision disturbances as well as excruciating pain, say researchers recently during an American Association for the Study of Headache conference in Scottsdale, Ariz.