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Migraine
Migraine is a severe headache with other disabling symptoms which can prevent you from continuing your normal daily activities. Typical symptoms are:
- intense headache, often on one side of the head
- visual disturbances such as blind spots, distorted vision, flashing lights
- nausea, vomiting
- diarrhoea
- sensitivity to light, sound and smells
- stiff neck and shoulders
- tingling or stiffness in the limbs
Migraine attacks can last from 2 hours, to 72 hours
Migraine is believed to be caused by a release of serotonin into the bloodstream from storage sites in the body, resulting in changes in the brain. In different people different things trigger this to happen, usually a combination things rather than just one factor cause the migraine:
- stress
- certain foods such as chocolate, citrus fruits, cheese
- alcohol
- additives in food
- caffeine
- bright lights or flashing lights
- loud noise
- strong smells
- change of weather
- smoking
- hormonal changes (in women)
What treatments are available?
- Paracetamol can be helpful, but anti-inflammatory painkillers such as Ibuprofen tend to work be more effective - take as early as possible when the migraine starts
- Combination medicines such as Migraleve, Paramax, Migramax,
and Domperamol contain both a painkiller
and an anti-sickness medicine
- Triptan medicines such as almotriptan, eletriptan, frovatriptan, naratriptan, rizatriptan, sumatriptan,
and zolmitriptan. These work by altering a chemical in the brain called 5HT, to help stop the migraine progressing
- If you have frequent or severe migraine attacks your doctor can prescribe medicine to take regularly that should stop most attacks, or if not, certainly reduce the severity
Source: LSMP
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