Migraine or just another headache?
Migraine has almost become a generic term for a severe headache. In fact it’s a very specific medical condition that’s fairly easy to distinguish from other types of headache.
The most common headache doppelganger is a tension type headache – these are very common and can be brought on by stress or being in a stuffy atmosphere. Unlike migraine these can disappear within 20 minutes or so, often without medication.
Migraine on the other hand is quite different, Here’s how one migraine sufferer describes an attack, "it seems to go through a process in that once it has started you can’t stop it and that process can last anything from a few hours in some cases up to 3 days. You take some pain killers as you would for a normal headache but they don’t do anything. They might abate the symptoms a little bit but essentially you’re waiting until the attack has run its course."
Dr Anne MacGregor is Director of Clinical Research at the City of London Migraine Clinic. She says people still find it difficult to fathom what type of headache they have, "We recognise that many people with migraine don’t recognise that the sick headaches they’ve got are migraine and that something can be done about it. It is a condition that fluctuates considerably over individual’s lives so that they can go through a period where they’re having quite frequent attacks and other times when they are very infrequent. I think the biggest issue is that until we help people to recognise that they have a problem that can be treated we’re still going to be left with about 50% of the population with migraine thinking they can’t do anything about it."
Migraine symptoms –
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Sensitivity to light and noise
- Yawning
- Lack of energy
- Some people experience an "aura" before the headache starts – zigzag lines, dizziness, slurred speech and even feelings of fear or confusion
Migraine sufferer, Andrea Jeffries says she had no idea she had migraine until she was diagnosed by Dr Anne MacGregor at the clinic, "I think you start to blame yourself, or think its quite normal and unless you know about migraine, or have read about it you wouldn’t really know - you don’t associate being sick with headaches and I also felt very shaky and shuddery, I’d lose my balance, I yawned a lot, but I didn’t put the two and two together."
To hear more of Andrea’s story, click here
Because of the difficulty many people have in deciphering what is and isn’t a migraine, there remains a risk of people saying they have a migraine when in fact, it’s just a normal headache. Andrea says this can make it difficult for sufferers, "a lot of people make the mistake of calling a headache a migraine when it isn’t. It is very sad and really ought to be corrected, but unfortunately it’s like people saying they have flu when they have a cold, there’s a real difference between the two."
