Sometimes, when you have a headache, you’ve probably noticed that your eyes hurt as well. Eye pain frequently accompanies a headache because the nerves that enable you to move your eyes become inflamed. Not only does this create a pain in your head, the pain will probably feel even worse every time you move your eyes to look at something. If you are prone to developing migraine headaches, you may have to stay in a darkened room due to the pain in your eyes.

If you have a headache with eye pain and don’t have a history of migraines, rest assured that your headache will clear up within a day or two. However, if your headache is accompanied by eye pain and the artery that runs up the side of your neck and through your temple is swollen and painful, you may have temporal arteritis. Temporal arteritis is a disease in which the temporal arteries, which run from the heart to the brain, become inflamed. Because one of the temporal arteries is the ophthalmic artery, which supplies blood to the eyes, your eye pain may be accompanied by blurring, double vision, and even sudden blindness.

It’s not known what causes temporal arteritis; however, like migraine, the condition tends to be hereditary. Temporal arteritis is most common in people over the age of 50 and affects women twice as often as men. Whites are also more prone to the disease than blacks are.

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