allaboutmigraine.com

I’ve suffered from migraines for many years and I have to be reasonably careful about what I do or don’t do in order to prevent an attack. For instance if I’m in a meeting, I have to sit with my back to the window otherwise the glare of the sun against the window can trigger an attack. I’m teetotal because drinking alcohol is a sure-fire way to make me ill. I don’t eat bananas, I avoid excessively salty food, I try to ensure that I get between 7 to 8 hours sleep a night …. the list goes on and on.

Exercise and Migraines

One of the main things, however, that triggers a migraine is exercise – but of course I can’t avoid doing that! It’s worse in the summer because it’s hot and the sunlight is very bright. We went for a long walk with the dog yesterday evening and I was ok for the first hour. But then we started walking with the sun in our eyes, and within a few minutes I knew that an attack was iminent. By the time I got home, my head was hurting, my eyes were hurting, my chest felt tight and I was sensitive to smells.

Nevertheless, I made dinner. What I’d rather do when I have a migraine is sit down, ignore everyone and everything, and sleep. However, I get migraines so frequently that I would just be a recluse! Instead I rely on my prescription migraine tablets, which are a god-send. They are evil little things: they increase your risk of heart attack and stroke and the side-effects are quite severe, but they do stop an attack if I take one soon after I feel it coming on.

Food and Migraines

So I took a tablet and carried on with my evening. However when the headache is particularly bad, the tablet takes longer to work and the side-effects are stronger – and I get an overwhelming craving for something sweet. It’s hard to explain it – my body almost cries out for it. We don’t buy chocolate or sweets, so Marc made me toast with jam. Within 5 minutes, I felt much better, but of course this isn’t great for trying to lose weight! But it’s yet another reason why I don’t lose weight despite the fact that I generally eat well and do a moderate amount of exercise every day.

Migraine ‘Cures’

As an aside, I have been to the doctor’s numerous times to find out what I can do about my migraines. Needless to say, all that is offered is more tablets. In fact, I was finally referred to a headache specialist a while ago. Great, I thought – someone is finally going to help me! I went in with high hopes and a long list of triggers, but the specialist wasn’t interested. All he did was suggest that I take a high dose of beta blockers every day, a tablet for (I think) reducing blood pressure that they’ve found also works for migraine sufferers. That taking beta blockers isn’t recommended for women of child bearing age didn’t seem to be a concern for the specialist, which I am still astounded by. Of course, I threw the prescription away and cancelled my follow up appointment.

Aura migraines afflict around 15% of the people who suffer from migraines in the world. These are special kinds of migraines that are heralded by odd visual and tactile stimulus that signal the onset of the migraine. Knowing the symptoms of an aura migraine allow you to get help before it hits in full, so in a way while aura migraines are more severe than regular migraines, they at least have the advantage of offering early warning signals that allow you to get medication quickly.

One of the symptoms of an aura migraine gave birth to it’s name. This symptom is visual in nature, usually manifesting as black spots dancing before a person’s eyes or an odd haziness around the edges of a person’s field of vision, sort of like looking through a fuzzy fish eye lens. Other people experience bursts of color or “stars” in their vision and sudden dizziness, akin to what happens to most people when they sometimes stand up too fast.

On the tactile level, and indicative of a more serious migraine coming on, aura migraines also sometimes leads to numbness in the face or the fingertips, and/or a general feeling of “tinglyness”, like pins and needles, across the entire body.

The reasons for the eye blurring is because aura migraines affect, to a certain extent, the nervous system of the sufferer. In a person with a migraine, the outer surface of the brain starts overloading with pain stimuli that causes a blockage of transmitted and received impulses from the rest of the body. The brain continually transmits and recieves electrical impulses through the nervous system, and the pain of a migraine interferes with these signals.

The optic nerves, being the most closely situated to the brain, are the first to be affected by this overload. This manifests in the optical symptoms of an aura migraine. The pain feedback basically messess around with signals the eyeballs are sending to the brain. On a more serious level, aside from dancing spots and blurriness, severe aura migraines have been known to shut off input from the eyes, causing temporary blackout and loss of vision during the migraine.

The numbness and tingly feeling is also connected to this symptom. This is more serious, as a severe aura migraine can not only cause numbness in the victim, it can actually lead to temporary loss of motor coordination and control functions. The impulses in the brain that accompany the migraine can literally cut off the person’s ability to move his or her limbs.

The original theory behind aura migraines was that blood vessels which supplied blood to the brain contracted from the pain brought about by the migraine, and the symptoms were brought about by a loss of blood flow to the brain as well as an increase in trapped blood pressure inside the skull and sinuses. The main support behind this theory came from the fact that the sympotoms of an aura migraine are similar to that experienced by aircraft pilots during blackout, when severe gravitational forces in a turn forced blood away from the brain. We now know this theory is false.

A study of aura migraines using an electroencephalogram shows a depression, or decrease, in brain activity and electrical impulses on the actual afflicted area that the migraine is hitting. Unfortunately, this “depressed” zone on the surface of the brain is surrounded by an aura, or corona, of hyperstimulated nerve cells. It is this hyperstimulated area that actually cuts off any input and output from that section of the brain during an aura migraine.

At it’s worst, aura migraines have been known not only to cause loss of motor function and vision, but unconsciousness in the victims. The lack of stimuli from the brain to certain parts of the body, combined with the oveload of pain stimuli in the affected part of the brain, causes temporary loss of consciousness.

Physicians and neurologists have been studying the patterns of migraines, especially aura migraines, for several years. While to this day there are plenty of theories surrounding the cause of it, there are as yet no solid conclusions. Pain remedies and medications have been developed however which lessen the effects of aura migraines and allow the victims to get relief when they feel one coming on.

Migraine is caused by prolonged headaches. To put it simple, a migraine is a chronic headache. It must be noted that migraine is hereditary. According to neurologists, migraine develops at a very young age. Usually it grows into a full condition during teenage years. The good thing is, migraine has a time span. It is not suffered for life. Migraine can disappear when the person has hit forty’s. Migraine can also be acquired through the lack of sleep and improper diet. Anything that destroys the natural balance of the body can trigger a migraine. Stress can also be a factor for this. There are medicine available to treat migraine but therapy is more preferable not to mention effective. Staying away from the television or the computer monitor is also recommended as this could could further damage to the eye nerves which triggers painful throbs in the head.