Well, That May Be A Bit Dramatic
As I child I used to get horrible headaches. These headaches persisted through high school as well. I didn’t understand what was wrong with me, but I did discern a particular pattern. I played baseball through junior and senior high school, and after every game I would get a headache. I played soccer as well, but rarely had a headache after those games.
The difference between these two was that baseball was in the spring/summer time frame, while soccer was in the fall/winter. It seemed that whenever I exerted myself under the sun I would get a headache. Even playing golf with my grandfather induced headaches during the summertime.
I didn’t really understand what caused these headaches until I was 23 years old. I was taking a public speaking course in college and a girl was giving a speech on migraines. She talked about the symptoms: nausea, vomiting, auras (light spots), sensitivity to light and sound, numbness, difficulty in speech, and severe semi-hemispherical head pain. I soon realized she was talking about my headaches!
I went to a doctor, and not wanting to influence his diagnosis I described my symptoms but did not tell him I thought I was having migraines. He started asking me questions about my mother. Did she have bad headaches as well? So bad that she was incapacitated in the same manner that I was? Thinking back, I realized that she did have the same kind of headaches that I had suffered all my life.
The doctor told me I most likely have the migraine disease, which is a genetic disorder passed primarily from a mother to her children. This was something I did not hear in the public speaking class. I called my mom and asked her about it. Her response was something like, “Oh yea, I knew I had migraines, but I hoped your headaches were something different.”
So I started learning what I could about migraines, in the hope that I might be able to find relief. Unfortunately, many people can only mitigate the pain, and at varying degrees of success. Drugs have had little effect on my migraines, so I generally have to sacrifice 8 to 12 hours of my life to recover.
Over the years I’ve had many people offer their “cures” for migraines. Thing is, there is no cure. Migraine is a true organic neurological disease, and if you are born with it you are stuck with it.
So, in the spirit of education, I’d like to share some facts about the migraine disease with you.
- Migraine is a disease; a headache is just one symptom. Migraine pain is caused by expansion of the cranial blood vessels (vasodilation). Traditional headache pain is caused by contraction of the blood vessels (vasoconstriction). Because of this, many treatments for traditional headaches actually make migraine pain worse.
- Migraine is a genetically-based disease. You have about a 50% chance of inheriting this disease if one of your parents has it. According to Dr. Stephen J. Peroutka, M.D., Ph.D., President & CEO of Spectra Biomedical, Inc., a group of research physicians dedicated to understanding the genetic illnesses, “This susceptibility is neither psychological nor induced by environmental causes."
- A migraine is induced by various triggers. Some examples of triggers are weather patterns, menstrual cycles, bright light, certain foods, chemical smells, second-hand smoke, alcohol, and heat/cold. The triggers are generally different for each person, and an attack may require multiple triggers. Some people claim stress is a major trigger, but some doctors disagree with this. My triggers tend to be second-hand smoke, excessive body heat, sunlight, and, it seems, stress. One of my mother’s triggers is cheese.
- Migraine causes a severe heightening of all of a person’s senses. A Migraineur (a person with the disease) is more sensitive to their environment to the point of pain. Light hurts, sound hurts, taste is enhanced, and even touch. During a migraine attack the person can actually feel atmospheric pressure against their skin.
- Migraine can be life threatening. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, "migraine can sometimes lead to ischemic stroke and stroke can sometimes be aggravated by or associated with the development of migraine." Twenty-seven percent of all strokes suffered by persons under the age of 45 are caused by Migraine.
There is more, but this is getting to be very long and I think I have covered my desired points.
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