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For migraine sufferers, early warning signs are a godsend that often enable them to sidestep the pain through early medication. Everyone with migraine eventually learns their own patterns and triggers, how to adapt their behavior to avoid known triggers, and what to do when presented with recognizable warning signs.
Whilst it’s not totally out of the question for migraine to develop as you get older, it’s not that common either. Migraine sufferers often experience their first attack in their teens or early twenties, although the majority of sufferers tend to be in their thirties or forties. According to the Migraine Trust, 90% of people have their first headache before they reach age forty.
Sometimes it feels as if your migraines have no cure and you’ll suffer like this for the rest of your life. It’s a complicated condition with a myriad of causes, so the process of finding out exactly what triggers yours, what type of migraines you have and then hitting on the correct solution can drag on for a while.
Over decades of intensive research into migraine pain and its causes, knowledge of this debilitating condition has improved greatly. There’s still lots to do to fully understand what happens in the brain to cause so many diverse symptoms, but thankfully it’s now widely accepted that migraine is not simply another term for ‘headache’.
In many migraine patients, the exact cause of the headaches is unknown. Individually, sufferers can discover their (often unique) pain triggers and learn to avoid them as far as possible, but this doesn’t explain why flashing lights, for instance, will cause a migraine in one person and leave another completely well.
Migraines are very personal. They vary from person to person in severity and cause, and as such, no one treatment will work for everyone. What soothes a migraine for one person, could trigger one in another. Some have been successful with home remedies, using common household items found their pantries and medicine cabinets to find relief.
You’re not hobbling around on crutches and you don’t wear a cast or have surgery wounds you can show off. There’s no blood, no stitches, no bruising. In fact, to all the world you look perfectly fine.
Migraine pain doesn’t show up on the outside, so it’s often hard to get people to believe just how bad the pain is. Many people get headaches, and to most it’s little more than an inconvenience. Headaches are swiftly dealt with by over the counter medication and within half an hour or so the...
Carpal tunnel syndrome and migraines are both serious, debilitating conditions that cause pain and distress in sufferers. Both are also recurring, and require treatment throughout the patient’s life. Until now, however, a direct link between the two has never been established.
A recent study now indicates there may actually be significant correlation, and that if you suffer from one you’re more likely than other people to develop the second at some point in your life.
It’s almost summer, and while the hazy, lazy, sunny days bring a sense of well-being and enjoyment to so many people, for migraine sufferers it can be quite the opposite. If you’re one of the 14 million Americans who regularly contend with chronic headaches, you might be a little less happy about the arrival of the heat.
The allergy season is in full swing, and your daily sinus headache is ruining your spring. Is it really a sinus headache, however, or could you possibly be suffering from a migraine headache instead? It’s not unusual to confuse the two, according to Mark A. Zacharek, MD, residency program director for the department of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
Here’s how to tell the difference between a migraine and a sinus headache:
