Patna: If you are in the habit of popping pills on your own whenever you have headache, think again.

Doctors taking parts in the two-day conference (ANEIMIDCON-2018) organised by the Association of Neuroscientists of Eastern India, said popping pills without doctors' consultation in case of headache can have side-effects on people's health.

"There are four types of headaches, including migraine, cluster headache, tension headache and secondary headache. People randomly pop medicines in case of headache without even knowing they are suffering from which type of headache. Suppose if one is suffering from migraine but he/she is taking pills prescribed for tension headache, it would have side-effects on the person taking the medicine. Also, the recovery time would get longer due to taking of wrong medicines," said Dr Debashish Chowdhury from Govind Ballabh Pant Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research, Delhi, who was one of the doctors participating in the conference.

"In tension headache, one experiences symptoms like stress, muscle pain and anxiety, in migraine, one experiences symptoms like nausea, vomiting , pain behind eye or ear among other symptoms. There are different treatments for different types of headaches and consulting doctors is the best option one has," said Chowdhury, adding that migraine had become quite common among the four headaches these days.

US-based neurosurgeon Dr G.S. Prakash talked about importance of time in the treatment of brain stroke patients. "Time management has great importance in the treatment of brain stroke patients. Around 60 per cent recovery chance of the patient increases if he/she is rushed to the hospital on time. The golden hour for saving a patient's life is the first 30 minutes. If patient is rushed to hospital within 30 minutes of the stroke, his/her chances of survival can be greatly increased," added Prakash.

Health minister Mangal Pandey, who inaugurated the conference, stressed on the lack of neurologists in the state. "The state needs more neurologists because the northern part of the state reports a good number of encephalitis cases every year which can be handled by neurologists only," said Pandey.