"I don't want to hear noise, I don't want to see light. I just want to lay down, be in a quiet state."

That's how Ivette Rosada describes the debilitating pain when one of her headaches hits. She calls her painful experiences "sinus headaches," but her doctor says they're probably migraines.

"There is always overlap between tension-type headache, migraine without aura and sinus headache," said Dr. Fereidoon Behin, of Christ Hospital.

Julie Berger also suffered from severe headaches, which she thought might have been due to allergies or a sinus infection. But after a doctor reviewed a CAT scan of her sinuses, another possible condition became apparent.

"(The doctor) asked me, 'By the way, do you get headaches?' And I said, 'Yeah, like, how do you know this?'"

He knew because Dr. Behin and others have noticed that some severe headache sufferers have a characteristic point of contact between the walls of the nasal cavity.

"That has a very big role in a lot of headache patients, including migraine, chronic daily headaches … and tension-type headaches," said Behin.

Doctors found that a relatively simple endoscopic sinus or nasal surgery to remove those nasal contact points seems to stop the release of certain chemicals that may act as migraine triggers.

In a study of 21 migraine patients, Behin found that the surgery cut the average number of headache days by more than half, as well as significantly reduced headache severity and disability.

For a patient to qualify for surgery, their headache must be relieved when the contact point is numbed with local anesthesia.

"That's a very good test to show that the patient will benefit from the procedure," said Behin.

As for Berger, she said the surgery has made her life a lot less painful.

"My headaches are almost completely gone," she said. "They really are. And I'm no longer supporting the aspirin industry."