Stages, Complications and Treatments of Migraine.

Amongst the various existing headaches we have, migraine is the most common, disabling, recurring one. Although it is a one-sided thing, it can happen anywhere around the head, neck, face, or all over. At the worst stage of migraine, it gets associated with light, noise, or smell sensitivity.

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Migraine pain could be felt on the face where it could be mistaken for a sinus headache, and in the neck region where it could be mistaken for arthritis or muscle spasms. Migraine complications are linked to other sinus symptoms like; watery eyes, a sense of facial pressure as well as nasal congestion. For most people, a warning aura symptom occurs before or with a headache, an aura could be; a flash of light, blind spots, visual disturbances, and any other form of disturbances including; arm or leg tingling as well as difficulty with speaking. There are usual migraines that could help with the prevention of migraines and make them less painful, these medications accompanied by other self-remedy options and lifestyle changes would also help out a lot.

Migraine goes beyond just that bad headache that comes up, it is a neurological disease that can cause debilitating throbbing pain, this pain can keep one in bed for several days.
The symptoms of migraines can affect children, teenagers, and adults and could progress into four stages namely; prodrome, aura, attack, and post-drome stage, although not everyone who has migraines necessarily goes through all of these stages, let me quickly explore the stages one after another.

The prodrome stage: This stage of migraine is experienced one to two days before the migraine proper, at this stage, you may notice a subtle change that would warn of an upcoming migraine, the symptoms are; fluid retention, constipation, food cravings, neck stiffness, change in mood, constant yawning, regular urination.

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The Aura stage:Some stage of aura may happen before or during a migraine. Auras are reversible symptoms of the nervous system which are actually visual most times but could come in form of other disturbances. Each aura symptom would start on a gradual note and begin to build up over several minutes, it could go as long as 60 minutes too. Examples of migraine auras include; loss of vision, inability to speak fluently, numbness in the face or one side of the body, pin sensation in an arm or leg, and visual phenomena like seeing different types of shapes, light flashes, or bright spots.

The attack stage: This stage of migraine often lasts for about 4-72 hours when left untreated, the different stages of migraine vary greatly from one person to another. The attack stage of migraine is characterized by; nausea/vomiting, sensitivity to sound, light, smell, and sometimes touch, and pains that pulse or throbs, the pain felt on one side or both sides of the head.

Post-drome stage: This stage of the migraine attack, is the after-effect stage, it is that point when the migraine experience is over and it comes with feelings of being drained, confused, and washed out for up to 24 hours, at this point a sudden movement of the head may revive the pain again.

The different types of Migraines.

• Common Migraine: This type of migraine headache would strike without giving any form of warning, it comes suddenly without prior notice.

• Complicated Migraine: This type of migraine comes with an aura and around 15-20% of people who experience migraine usually have an aura.

• Silent Migraine: Also known as acephalgic migraine, it includes the aura symptoms but not the headache that follows typically.

• Hemiplegic Migraine: This form of migraine comes with temporary paralysis or with a neurological or sensory change affecting just one side of the body. At the start of the experience, it would be linked with; a tingling sensation, dizziness, sensational loss, and change in vision, there are times when this comes with pain in the head and times when they do not.

• Migraine with brainstem aura: This migraine comes with slurred speech, loss of balance, and double vision which would lead to headaches. The headache pain would affect the back of the head coming suddenly and is often linked with the ability to speak appropriately.

• Retinal/ocular Migraine: With this type of migraine, you would notice a partial or complete vision loss linked with one eye along with a dull ache behind the eye that would spread to the rest of the head. The vision loss could last for a minute or even last for months.

• Status migraine: This is a rare and very severe type of migraine that can last longer than 72 hours, the pain of the headache and nausea can be really bad. Status migraine is usually caused by the intake of/withdrawal from certain medications.

• Chronic Migraine: Chronic migraine is when the migraine happens at least 15 days per month, the symptoms may change consistently as well as the severity of the pain. People who experience chronic migraines may have to use headache pain medications that would last for around 10-15 days.

Having established a clear fact, the occurrence of migraine is not dependent on age, class, or gender. However, there are risk factors that would increase your chances of getting a migraine, these risk factors include;

• Gender: Migraine headache happens more in women than men because of hormones, especially those between the age of 15-55.

• Genetics: Study has made it clear that up to 80% of those who get migraine headaches usually have relatives who have the disease.

• Stress: Increased stress levels would cause serious migraine.

• Smoking.

• Foods: Some food and drinks like alcohol, aged cheese, etc may be responsible for migraine.

• Caffeine: Getting excessive caffeine or a reduced quantity of what you used to have can cause migraine, note as well that, caffeine itself can be used as a treatment type for acute migraine.

• Medications: Medications that widens blood vessel can trigger migraine.

In order to prevent migration, you need to get observant about the triggers that could possibly trigger migraine for you, things like; stress, and certain food types, and avoiding them may reduce the chances of experiencing migraines.

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle like exercising regularly, sleeping healthy, eating healthy, and reducing the intake of caffeine and alcohol.

Migraines can severely affect the quality of life and even prevent people from successfully carrying out daily activities, treatment and recovery may need people to stay in bed for several days.

References.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/headache/migraine-headaches

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/5005-migraine-headaches

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK560787/

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/migraine/

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/148373

https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1142556-overview

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/migraine-headache/symptoms-causes/syc-20360201

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/headache/migraine-headaches#symptoms

https://www.webmd.com/migraines-headaches/migraines-headaches-migraines