Why Am I Getting Migraines

What Is The Prognosis For People With Migraines

Why Do I Get Headaches When Lift Weights?

Migraines are unique to each individual. Likewise, how migraines are managed is also unique. The best outcomes are usually achieved by learning and avoiding personal migraine triggers, managing symptoms, practicing preventive methods, following the advice of your healthcare provider and reporting any significant changes as soon as they occur.

Common Causes Of Migraines

Doctors arenât totally sure what causes migraine headaches, but they think imbalances in certain brain chemicals may play a role.

The trigeminal nerve in your head runs your eyes and mouth. It also helps you feel sensations in your face and is a major pathway for pain. Your levels of a chemical called serotonin may fall at the start of a migraine, and this nerve can release chemicals called neurotransmitters that travel to your brain and cause pain.

How Is Ocular Migraine Diagnosed

The diagnosis of ocular migraine is done by the doctor based on the following:

Medical history: The doctor will take a detailed medical history about the onset of symptoms, whether loss of vision occurred in one or both the eyes, family history of migraines, and personal history of underlying health conditions such as high blood pressure. The vision loss may or may not be accompanied by a headache.
Physical examination: The doctor will perform a detailed physical examination and may refer you to an ophthalmologist to examine the health of the retina and blood vessels in the eyes.
Investigations: The doctor may recommend certain investigations to assess the general health of the person and confirm the diagnosis and rule out other conditions that may mimic ocular migraine. These investigations mainly include:
Blood investigations such as blood counts, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and coagulation tests

What To Know When Youre Getting Headaches Every Day

Lets get this out of the way: Getting severe headaches every day isnt normal, so you should talk to your doctor, especially if they come on suddenly. Some headaches can indicate neurological disorders that require treatment, and sudden, severe headaches are always a cause for concern.So, whats a severe headache exactly? Most headaches fall into one of three general categories:

Are Migraine Headaches More Common In Women Than Men

Flashing Light Peripheral Vision Headache

Yes. About three out of four people who have migraines are women. Migraines are most common in women between the ages of 20 and 45. At this time of life women often have more job, family, and social duties. Women tend to report more painful and longer lasting headaches and more symptoms, such as nausea and vomiting. All these factors make it hard for a woman to fulfill her roles at work and at home when migraine strikes.

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Are There Different Kinds Of Migraine

Yes, there are many forms of migraine. The two forms seen most often are migraine with aura and migraine without aura.

Migraine with aura . With a migraine with aura, a person might have these sensory symptoms 10 to 30 minutes before an attack:

Seeing flashing lights, zigzag lines, or blind spots
Numbness or tingling in the face or hands
Disturbed sense of smell, taste, or touch
Feeling mentally “fuzzy”

Only one in five people who get migraine experience an aura. Women have this form of migraine less often than men.

Migraine without aura . With this form of migraine, a person does not have an aura but has all the other features of an attack.

What Are Rebound Migraines

Women who use acute pain-relief medicine more than two or three times a week or more than 10 days out of the month can set off a cycle called rebound. As each dose of medicine wears off, the pain comes back, leading the patient to take even more. This overuse causes your medicine to stop helping your pain and actually start causing headaches. Rebound headaches can occur with both over-the-counter and prescription pain-relief medicines. They can also occur whether you take them for headache or for another type of pain. Talk to your doctor if you’re caught in a rebound cycle.

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Who Is At Risk For Migraines

About 12% of Americans get migraines. They can affect anyone, but you are more likely to have them if you:

Are a woman. Women are three times more likely than men to get migraines.
Have a family history of migraines. Most people with migraines have family members who have migraines.
Have other medical conditions, such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, sleep disorders, and epilepsy.

Seizure Medications And Beta

Why do I Get Headaches After Exercise

Some seizure medications like topiramate and valproate, or beta-blockers like propranolol, have also been used to prevent migraine with aura. These medications are also sometimes used to treat certain types of migraine, possibly pointing to a connection between treating both spreading depression and migraine with auras.

If you regularly have migraine attacks, you should see a doctor. There are some red flags, however, that may require you to seek additional medical attention right away. These include:

sudden new migraine symptoms, like an aura
changes in the type or frequency of migraine attacks
new vision or neurological changes that accompany the aura or migraine attack
sudden intense pain in one area that could signal bleeding in the brain
headaches that come with speech or balance impairment, facial drooping, or other possible signs of stroke

What Are Some Migraine Risk Factors And Triggers

Some risk factors make you more likely to get migraine headaches. Other things may trigger a migraine.

Common migraine risk factors include the following:

Family history: You are much more likely to have migraines if one or both of your parents had migraines.
Sex: Women are more likely than men to have migraines.
Age: Most people have their first migraine during adolescence, but migraines can start at any age, usually before age 40.

Common migraine triggers include the following:

Food and drink: Certain food and drink may cause migraines. Dehydration and dieting or skipping meals may also trigger migraines.
Hormone changes: Women may experience migraines related to their menstrual cycles, to menopause, or to using hormonal birth control or hormone replacement therapy.
Stress: Stress may trigger migraines. Stress includes feeling overwhelmed at home or work. But you can also become stressed by exercising too much or not getting enough sleep.
Senses: Loud sounds, bright lights , or strong smells may trigger migraines.
Medicines: Certain medicines may trigger migraines. If you think your migraines might be related to your medicine, talk to your doctor. Your doctor may be able to prescribe a different medicine.
Illness: Infections, such as the cold or the flu, may trigger migraines, especially in children.

Foods that may trigger migraines:

Aged, canned, cured, or processed meat

Dehydration And Caffeine Withdrawal

About one-third of people who get migraine attacks note dehydration as a trigger.

Obviously, you cant drink water while youre asleep, so its possible that waking up dehydrated is a reason why people are more prone to getting migraine attacks in the morning.

The wee hours of the morning also tend to mark a full day since your last caffeine fix. Coffee and other forms of caffeine dilate the blood vessels in your brain, relieving tension. And caffeine withdrawal has been connected to migraine attacks.

Migraine happens in several different stages. You may wake up with the pain of a migraine attack, but that doesnt mean you didnt experience the other phases of migraine in the hours or days before the pain.

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Who Gets Migraines What Are The Risk Factors

Its difficult to predict who may get a migraine and who may not, but there are risk factors that may make you more vulnerable. These risk factors include:

Genetics: Up to 80% of people who get migraine headaches have a first-degree relative with the disease.
Gender. Migraine headaches happen to women more than men, especially women between the ages of 15 and 55. Its likely more common in women because of the influence of hormones.
Stress level. You may get migraines more often if youre high-stress. Stress can trigger a migraine.

Using Meditation To Control Everyday Headaches

People who suffer from migraines and tension headaches every day arefar more likely to use alternative medicine than those who dont. Meditation seems most successful, but theres also not much else that has substantial scientific support. Meditation can be very effective, Mauskop says. Weve noticed significant improvements in patients who take on meditation as a part of their treatment. If youre getting headaches every day, consider starting meditation.A 2014 study showed that getting migraines or tension-type headaches every day can lead to feeling stressedwonder why! Whats more, the headache itself can cause stress, which in turn adds to the pain of the headache . Exercise can effectively treat stress, but you probably wont feel like going on a five-mile run while youre nursing a bad headache every day, so try to get your exercise in before the headache strikes. In addition to treating stress, exercise can reduce the frequency and intensity of headaches and migraines,according to the American Migraine Foundation. The key word here is regular, so commit to a certain amount of exercise per day and dont let anything interfere with that time.

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Environmental And Genetic Triggers

, some researchers believe that substances in the brain may build up and cause inflammation, leading to migraine.

Genes and environmental triggers may also play a role in this inflammation.

They also note that although migraine is more common in females, males are more likely to develop migraine with aura.

What Is An Ocular Migraine

Ocular migraine, also called an ophthalmic migraine or a retinal migraine, refers to repeated attacks of transient one-sided vision disturbance, or blindness that is associated with minimal or no headache.

Research suggests that ocular migraines may occur due to transient spasm of the arteries supplying blood to the eye tissues . The affected person often gives a history of migraines to one or more blood relatives.

Why Do Migraines Happen

As for the other questions, migraines happen for a reason. Many migraine headaches, as discussed so many places elsewhere on our website, happen because of nerve entrapment and irritation from adjacent structures. Remember, these nerves that so often cause migraines are in the face and neck, NOT the brain itself. But why are your nerves irritated?

There are several reasons why these peripheral nerves can be irritated and can be traced down to a specific reason:

Trauma and whiplash injury, even in the distant past, can cause irritation, inflammation, and even scar tissue to a nerve or the structures next to a nerve. This is particularly common in the back of the head and neck at the occipital nerves. While migraine headaches might arise shortly after a traumatic event, sometimes the nerve is shocked from the trauma, and it takes a while for it to resume sending signals to the brain. When those signals do come back, they can be pain signals from the new irritation resulting from the trauma. Alternatively, scarred muscle tissue in the neck from whiplash might not become symptomatic until something else happens. A childhood whiplash injury may not present as chronic pain until that child grows into an adult with the associated stresses of life. The combination of stress and the old scar can then push on the nerve, causing severe migraine pain or occipital neuralgia.

Where Can I Find Relief

Why Do I Get Headaches When I Read? | Concussion Questions

There is still a lot of research to be done on nocturnal migraines, including the right type of treatment or prevention.. The MayoClinic recommends three possible treatments for nocturnal migraines that you could discuss with your physician:

Caffeine: A caffeine tablet or beverage taken before bed
Lithium : a bipolar disorder medication
Indomethacin : a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medication

Also be sure to address sleep apnea, snoring and other sleep disturbances. Review our Ultimate Sleep Guide for natural and holistic was to improve your quality of sleep.

Migraine attacks are personal an individualized and holistic approach to discovering the root cause of your migraine is essential for a real cure. Migraine are symptoms themselves of deeper health issues, and the Engineering Radiance Migraine Freedom Plan is designed to eliminate your migraine headaches not just treat the symptoms by finding the internal stressors at the core of the issue.

Book your first appointment with our team of migraine specialists here.

Resources:

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Treating And Preventing A Sudden Increase In Migraine With Aura

Theres a lot thats unknown about why migraine with aura or cortical spreading depression develop. Its unclear at the moment whether impending migraine and blood flow changes itself triggers electrical changes in the brain or whether the electrical changes are the cause of blood flow changes and migraine.

Tension Headache Vs Migraine

Tension headaches, which are brought on by emotional, mental or physical stress, are more common than migraines.

People who have tension headaches often complain of a band of pain across their forehead, or pressure on either side of the head. The pain is tiring, but not as severe as migraine.

Migraine, on the other hand, usually hurts worse on one side of the head. And, you may experience light sensitivity, aura, or bright lines or dots in your field of vision.

Tension headaches may resolve on their own once the source of stress is gone. In these cases, over-the-counter pain medications and lifestyle adjustments may help.

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Why Do I Get Frequent Ocular Migraines

For migraine sufferers, visual disturbances like zigzag lines or flashes of light are common occurrences, especially in those who experience an aura prior to a migraine. But some people experience these visual disturbances and do not get the pain associated with a migraine. These visual disturbances are known as ocular migraines or migraines of the eye. But what exactly are they and why do they happen so frequently?

Understanding What Causes Headaches And Finding Treatments To Relieve The Pain

Headache Light Sensitivity Dizziness Fatigue

Nearly everyone has had headache pain, and most of us have had it many times. A minor headache is little more than a nuisance that’s relieved by an over-the-counter pain reliever, some food or coffee, or a short rest. But if your headache is severe or unusual, you might worry about stroke, a tumor, or a blood clot. Fortunately, such problems are rare. Still, you should know and how to control the vast majority of headaches that are not threatening to your health.

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What Are The Types Of Headaches What Type Of Headache Is A Migraine

There are over 150 types of headaches, divided into two categories: primary headaches and secondary headaches. A migraine is a primary headache, meaning that it isnt caused by a different medical condition. Primary headache disorders are clinical diagnoses, meaning theres no blood test or imaging study to diagnose it. A secondary headache is a symptom of another health issue.

When To Contact A Doctor

According to the American Migraine Foundation, a person needs emergency medical care if there is an immediate onset of symptoms or the symptoms do not go away within 60 minutes.

Also, someone should contact the persons doctor as soon as possible if they experience symptoms such as weakness on one side of the body or changes in alertness. Migraine increases a persons risk factors for stroke, so a doctor will need to evaluate any symptoms related to stroke.

A person should also talk with their doctor if they find that their medication is no longer working. This could be due to an increase in symptoms, a change in other medications, or the onset of side effects from their other medications.

Before starting or stopping any medication, a person should talk with their doctor.

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Can Migraines Be Prevented

You can’t prevent every migraine. But learning your triggers and trying to avoid them can help. Take a break from activities that might start a migraine, such as using the computer for a long time. If you know that some foods are triggers, skip them. Some people find that cutting back on caffeine or drinking a lot of water can help prevent migraines.

Make a plan for all the things you have to do especially during stressful times like exams so you don’t feel overwhelmed when things pile up. Regular exercise also can reduce stress and make you feel better.

The more you understand about your headaches, the better prepared you can be to fight them.

How Can I Tell If I Have A Migraine Or Just A Bad Tension

Why do I get headaches at night?

Compared with migraine, tension-type headache is generally less severe and rarely disabling. Compare your symptoms with those in this chart to see what type of headache you might be having.

Migraine vs. bad tension-type headache

Symptom
Aura before onset of headache		x

Note: Rebound headache may have features of tension and/or migraine headache. Adapted from a table produced by the American Council for Headache Education.

Although fatigue and stress can bring on both tension and migraine headaches, migraines can be triggered by certain foods, changes in the body’s hormone levels, and even changes in the weather.

There also are differences in how types of headaches respond to treatment with medicines. Although some over-the-counter drugs used to treat tension-type headaches sometimes help migraine headaches, the drugs used to treat migraine attacks do not work for tension-type headaches for most people.

You can’t tell the difference between a migraine and a tension-type headache by how often they occur. Both can occur at irregular intervals. Also, in rare cases, both can occur daily or almost daily.

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