Migraine is far and away the most common debilitating primary headache disorder
and it comes with a constellation of things beyond the headache pain
that impact them and the impact their activities of daily living
and affect their ability to do the things that they love most.
We know that it’s from changes in the body and the brain chemistry
and we know that genetics accounts for about half of all migraines
and sometimes we think about the migraine as just the headache
when really it goes well beyond that.
Migraine is the type of headache that typically affects one side of the head
and oftentimes are associated with nausea,
vomiting, light sensitivity, sound sensitivity, smell sensitivity.
Also, in terms of what the pain feels like to someone.
Is it short, stabbing, dull, aching, throbbing?
They don't feel well or they don't feel like they're their usual selves
for the days before their migraine attack.
Sometimes they're present physically,
but they're not fully there.
Sometimes people feel washed out,
they don't feel themselves
after the headache pain has gone away
and sometimes also those same people would share that
it took a while to speak up and have courage to talk about
the migraine or their headache, in part
because if they had in the past, it was sort of dismissed.
It's just in your head.
It's just a migraine.
It's just a headache when it's not.
It's something that profoundly affects someone,
it profoundly effects their family.
If people are taking over-the-counter medication to treat their pain
multiple times a day or even on a daily basis,
that tells me that there's something going on that we need to investigate further
and paradoxically, over time, if people are taking daily,
multiple times, daily as needed, pain medication,
that can actually make the headache worse that they're treating
and sometimes they can develop a new type of headache on top of that.
But also that typically tells me that someone would benefit
from a preventive medication or some other preventive therapy.
In the last almost decade, there's been dozens of new treatments
that have come out for migraine and other types of headache disease.
Some of these are in completely new families of medications.
Some of these are new formulations of medications
that have been around for quite some time.
Some of these are not medications at all.
There's some really good evidence for some vitamins and supplements
that can work really well to help prevent migraines
and to help to reduce the severity of migraine attacks when people get them.
There's neuromodulation devices.
There's several of them on the market and there's more coming.
They can be used for prevention.
So use it every day or sometimes more than once a day
and there's some of that you could use in the in the throes of a migraine attack as well
Talk to someone about it.
Bring it up.
Headache and headache pain is not just in your head.
It is very real.
And if you bring it up to a doctor and they're dismissive,
find someone else to talk to you about it
because there are people out there that want to understand your pain,
want to understand it so we can help treat it.
You don't have to suffer in silence.