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If anyone was ever in any doubt regarding the severity of migraine, they need only be pointed to a report produced by the World Health Organization (WHO). The report indicates that chronic daily headache (CDH), of which migraine is one type, is as disabling to sufferers as psychosis, quadriplegia, or dementia. Many sufferers find their migraines are controllable through conventional pain medications, but for a significant minority such treatments have little to no effect.
Migraine is far more than pain, with headache itself being just one of the symptoms. To non-migraine sufferers, migraine is simply a bad headache and this perception has freely percolated society causing confusion and misunderstanding. Newly diagnosed sufferers often struggle to make the connection between their mood swings and associated symptoms, not fully understanding how closely the two are related.
Migraine can be as unpredictable as a blind date, and is most likely to make its unwelcome appearance just when it’s most inconvenient. Important events like work meetings, job interviews, weddings or engagement parties can be especially scary for migraineurs and many avoid making commitments for fear of letting people down.
Notoriously tricky to treat, what works for one migraine patient will have no effect on another. Usually, various different types of migraine treatment or medication are tried before the option of surgery is considered.
Guilt and migraine walk hand in hand for many sufferers who often find the emotional burden as upsetting as the pain and other symptoms. Guilt comes from various sources, and left unattended can escalate into much more serious problems, damaging relationships at work and at home.
People are often surprised to hear that anti-depressant medications are offered in the treatment of migraine headaches. New migraine sufferers can feel a little shocked if their doctor recommends anti-depressants, especially when they have no depression symptoms or feelings.
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’.
