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Migraines are a pain (pun intended!) at the best of times, but when you’re pregnant they can truly become a nightmare. If you’re one of the lucky patients whose headaches lessen during pregnancy, you can be grateful, because many sufferers find the attacks actually worsen during this time. Here’s what to expect from a migraine during your gestation period and how to manage various scenarios.
Statistics from the Migraine Research Foundation show companies in the U.S. lose more than $13 billion each year due to employee migraines, thanks to 113 million lost work days. For sufferers, developing a headache during work isn’t only inconvenient, it can be harmful to your job security and affect your income. It's crucial to find ways of treating migraines that attack at work, to reduce your absenteeism and possibly even to enable you to keep your job. Here are some strategies for managing...
Finding a cure for migraines is the dream of 37 million Americans who suffer regularly from these painful headaches. As one of humankind’s oldest afflictions, it dates back to the ancient Egyptians and 1200 BC. In 400 BC Hippocrates described migraine with aura and first recorded the relief sufferers could feel after vomiting. It took another 600 years, however, before Aretaeus of Cappadocia described the typical one-sided headache pain of a migraine, in tandem with vomiting and blocks of...
Nausea and vomiting are very common during a migraine attack, with studies showing close to three-quarters of patients experience vomiting and almost 95% feel nauseous. One reason for this is that while a migraine attack begins in the brain, it causes changes in the brain stem and affects the central nervous system, too. Neurologists believe this could be the source of the headache pain, as well as the sensitivity to light and sound often experienced during an attack. Nausea is also a side...
Living with chronic migraine is difficult enough for adults, but it’s even harder for young people. Teens whose parents don’t know what it’s like to experience the blinding headaches and other symptoms often have a tough time getting them to understand why you don’t want to do all the typical teenage activities. Interestingly, there are whole threads on Reddit devoted to helping teens explain to their parents what migraines are about, so it’s not an unusual problem.
The irritating buzzing and ringing in the ears that signifies an attack of tinnitus is a common issue, affecting around 50 million Americans. Interestingly, it’s not an independent medical condition but a symptom of several other problems, including many types of headache disorders. Patients often mistake migraines for inner ear problems and vice versa, partly because both can cause tinnitus. Here are the differences between tinnitus and migraine, and details on how they are connected.
As a migraineur, you’ve likely heard the term brain fog, and maybe you have even experienced the distressing symptoms. Brain fog is not a medical term, but it is a commonly used phrase describing a confused, unfocused state of mind. You’re forgetful, can’t get your thoughts in order or retain information.
It’s distressing and worrying, and can indicate some kind of imbalance. There may be several causes of migraine-related brain fog, from lifestyle to medication side effects or illness.
A sudden, stabbing pain in your face or head feels like you'e being attacked with a sharp object. It arrives without warning and is short, sharp and intensely uncomfortable for up to 30 seconds. You've just experienced an "ice pick" headache, and the bad news is that it could recur several times during the day. The official name given to these attacks by the International Headache Society is a Primary Stabbing Headache, and they can occur in migraineurs and non-sufferers alike even when no...
Women’s migraine patterns often have their roots in monthly, hormonal fluctuations, where changes in body chemistry cause imbalances that result in headaches. Many women find headaches are worse either during, before, or just after their periods as it is during this time that estrogen levels dip. Some schools of thought assert that it is not the level of estrogen in the body that causes the headache, but rather the change in the estrogen/progesterone balance.
To many people who don’t suffer from migraine, the word migraine simply means a bad headache. Migraine sufferers know different. It is a complex disorder with many associated symptoms ranging from distressing to debilitating. As with all aspects of migraine, the aura is often misunderstood and minimized by those who have never experienced it.
