There are different triggers for migraine, one of them for instance can be daily stress,
can be stress at work, in personal life and other factors. Hormones play an important
part in migraines, we know that the majority of our patients are female patients. These
patients often do much worse when they have their menstruation, they do better when they
are pregnant and interestingly they often do better when they are through menopause
so we know for a fact that hormones play a big part in migraines.
There are different triggers for migraines and also the causes for migraines have been
debated in the past.
Many of our patients describe it as a band
around the head, like a pressing band, a band that develops into massive pain, quite quickly
sometimes. Patients have auras, warning signs, flashing lights, sensitiveness to noise, mood
swings, depression and abdominal symptoms. Many of our children who suffer from migraines
have a tummy ache and the migraine is then developing into an excruciating head pain.
A migraine is more severe than a normal headache. The normal headache, for instance a so called
tension type headache which you can get with daily stress fades away with painkillers whereas
a migraine often does not and a migraine is associated with other symptoms such as sensitiveness
to noise and sensitiveness to light, which we call phono and photophobia. Patients have
to lie down in a dark room, they are very sensitive to migraines, they feel sick, they
even vomit and the pattern of a migraine is therefore quite different to a normal headache
a lot of us have.
The management of migraine can be very different
and with every patient very individual. A lot of our patients watch their diet which
makes sense as a healthy diet does help, patients for instance with gluten or other intolerances
to food have to watch their diet very carefully because if they don’t follow the guidelines
with their diet then that also triggers the migraine. Daily stress in work, other stresses
including bad stress like bereavement for instance also induces migraine.
The daily management otherwise with migraine means that you take medication, means that
you go and see a specialist, that you are in good contact and good rapour with your
GP who keeps a watchful eye on you and that you lead a normal healthy life. What does
that mean? That means that you sleep enough, at least six hours, that you have a regular
pattern of sleep, that you preferably do not smoke, that you don’t take any drugs and
that you don’t drink too much alcohol.
Migraines do normally not raise the risk of
a heart attack. A heart attack is caused by other risk factors such as high blood pressure,
increased weight and smoking, however a migraine can increase the risk of a stroke or of a
mini stroke. This has been debated a lot and the latest research actually shows that this
is not as evident as we always thought however frequent migraines can cause so called neurovascular
problems and therefore these patients possibly have to undergo a scan and also a vascular
risk profile needs to be assessed by a specialist.