HEADACHES CAN LEAD TO OVER 890,000 missed days of work every year, costing employers nearly €100 million according to a survey carried out as part of Headache Awareness Week.

Nearly a quarter of people said that their workload is the biggest trigger of a headache while 22 per cent said that staring at a screen all day is the main cause.

Twenty-one per cent blamed dealing with stressed colleagues or clients and the survey also found that one in five people have had limited work ability due to a headache.

The survey of a representative sample of over 1,000 people was carried out by Empathy Research for the headache tablet brand Nurofen.

According to Nurofen, some 3.2 million people in Ireland get headaches with almost one in five experiencing a headache once-a-week or more.

Twenty-two per cent described their level of pain as ‘bad’, ‘very bad’, or at the level where they ‘cannot cope’.

Common triggers of headaches can be lack of sleep in 57 per cent of cases, dehydration in 51 per cent of cases and skipping meals in 31 per cent of cases.

Headache Awareness Week has been launched in association with Nurofen to help educate people on the types and causes of headaches as well as providing advise on how to minimise or relieve them.

Nurofen has launched its own Headache Soother app as part of this.

Read: Painkillers “can cause” headaches