Sunday 20 December 2015

Migraine headaches: Causes and various phases of migraines

A migraine is a kind of a headache that occurs only in a specific area of the head, although the area varies from person to person. The sufferer also shows sensitivity towards harsh sound or strong lights. The common symptoms associated with it are sneezing and vomiting that makes one’s life miserable. Generally, headaches due to migraine are more painful than the normal headaches, and it ranges from mild to moderate.

Migraine headaches are more experienced by women than men. Migraine becomes so terrible at times that it can even attack twice or thrice in a week, and the worst part is that; it can be treated to some extent giving you temporary relief but is not curable permanently. Though migraines don’t have any particular time to attack but usually the attack starts early morning.

People usually experience a kind of warning before the onset of pain. It may be feeling of weakness on any particular side of body or trouble in visibility because of the blind spots kind of thing develops in any one eye.


Top 3 things that you must known about migraines

Reasons behind a migraine

Migraine headaches are generally considered to be genetic so next time when you are experiencing terrible pain of migraine, blame your gene for the worst condition. But there are other factors that trigger the pain such as:


  1. Lessor too much of sleep.
  2. Drinking alcohol.
  3. Drinking too much caffeine related beverages like tea, coffee, etc.
  4. Food that contain monosodium glutamate which is a kind of flavour enhancer
  5. Weather changes.
  6. Strong fragrances.

Diagnosis of migraines

Migraine headaches can be easily diagnosed by physicians with its crystal clear symptoms such as the type of pain you experience, the area where exactly you feel the pain, and how often do you feel the pain. Based on these symptoms your physician advises a blood test or other medical examination.

Phases of migraines

Once migraine headache is triggered, it goes through four phases such as:

Early warning signs or prodromal phase 

This phase usually starts few hours before actual attack where a person might feel irritating, thirsty, cravings for any specific food, frequent urination etc.

Strong sensation or the aura phase

This phase is not experienced by many people suffering from migraines attacks. It is experienced by 1 out of 5 people where a person usually feels trouble in vision, a strange sensation like pricking of needles or pins on the skin.

The main attack phase

This is supposed to be one of the most terrific phases of migraines where a person feels just to relax in a quite dark room away from normal activities. It usually begins from above the eyes and get worst as time passes.

After attack or postdromal phase

After the attack the effect may last up to one day where a person feels extremely tired, confused and lethargic.

Migraine can be managed by maintaining good lifestyle like proper sleep, avoid foods that basically triggers the pain and by daily exercise. For more information visit www.mewithoutmigraine.com.

Thursday 26 November 2015

Knowing the common types of headaches – which one do you have?

Headache is a nervous system disorder that can be of different types. It is one of the most recurrent and constant uneasiness that people can experience. For some, it is tolerable and some fail to bear the excruciating and throbbing pain. Depending on the typesof headaches, the treatment plan must be chosen. Some have easy remedies and medicine to get rid of them, and some last for a lifetime.

Whatever type of headache you might have, it is very crucial that yours has been identified properly. Misdiagnosis may worsen the condition or at least prolong the pain, due to no proper support and supply of medicines. According to the World Health Organization, 47% of the adult population has had a headache at least for once within the previous year. Despite this huge number of sufferers, headache is one of the most under-recognised, underestimated as well as undertreated conditions.

Types of headaches:

A disorder of nervous system, a headache is a very disabling and painful feature. There are different types of headaches depending on the cause of its occurrence. Thus, there are the primary headaches that are caused by direct reasons and there are secondary headaches that are side effects or after effects of some other diseases or medication usage. More than 150 different kinds of headaches have been medically categorised. Amongst these, the most common ones are – tension headaches, sinus, migraines, cluster headaches, mixed headache, acute or chronic headaches etc.

  • Tension type headache:
It is a non-progressive and chronic daily headache in which mild to moderate pain is felt. This type of pain caused by tension is mostly short-lived.

  • Sinus headache:
Sinus pains are also one of the most common types of headaches and affect the forehead, cheekbones and bridge of nose. Nasal discharges, facial swelling, fever etc. are caused by the inflammation of the sinusitis. Sudden head movement can make the pain severe.

  • Migraine headache:
Most people mistake their pain as sinus. However, in a 2004 study, it was seen that 80% of the doctor-diagnosed or self-diagnosed sinus headaches were actually migraines and had no signs of sinusitis. What causes migraine has not been understood, but in this case, serotonin levels in brain drops down and neuropeptides travel through the meninges. This causes this excruciating pain that can last for hours to 3 days at a stretch. Many people experience auras such as blind spots, flashes of light and intolerable sensitivity to light and sound, before the actual attack.

  • Cluster headache:

One of the rarest of all types of headaches is cluster headache that occurs in only 1% of the entire population. Some even refer to this type as “suicide headache” due to the unbearable pain that the sufferer considers suicide as a better choice. The pain occurs behind the eye and is constantly throbbing. It can attack up to thrice a day and last for two weeks to three months.