Migraine - Symptoms and Causes
What is Migraine?
Migraine is a neurological condition that involves recurrent attacks of moderate to severe headache. Migraine pain is typically pulsating and affects one side or area of the head. During a Migraine attack, patients may experience nausea, vomiting, and sensory sensitivity such as phono phobia and photophobia, that significantly affects their lives.
What Causes Migraine?
The causes of migraine are not fully understood, however both genetic and environmental factors are likely to play a role in triggering a migraine attack. Migraines can be triggered by dietary, environmental, hormonal, physical and emotional factors, and different triggers may cause different types of Migraine attacks, even for the same person.
What are the Symptoms of Migraine?
Migraine attacks can have a number of symptoms and it acts differently based on Individuals. The Common symptoms are
- Throbbing Pain
- Centralised Pain in a location.
- Moderate to Severe Intensity Pain.
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Headaches that last longer from 4 - 72 hours.
- Stiffness of the Neck and Shoulders.
What is the Frequency of Migraine?
Migraine can be characterised as chronic or episodic depending on the frequency of the migraine attacks. Chronic Migraine is defined by the International Classification of Headache Disorders ( ICHD) as headache occurring 15 or more days / month for more than 3 months, which, on at-least 8 days/month has the features of Migraines headaches.
Within episodic migraine there is significant variation in the number of migraine days experienced. Stewart at al. (2010) found that 5.3% of people with episodic migraine had between 30 and 44 headache days in a three-month period, bringing them close to the threshold for chronic migraine. Episodic migraine can progress to chronic migraine, with approximately 2.5% of persons with episodic migraine developing new-onset chronic migraine each year (Bigal et al., 2008).
