I love to play with and cuddle with my three-year-old daughter; she is so much fun and I love her very much. She is an active kid though and so she wants to be running or moving of some sort. So, when I get a migraine headache, I feel like I am giving her the short end of the stick because I am practically incapacitated and the once fun Daddy is now out of it. Family, career and even hobbies are possible casualties in the war against the vascular condition called migraines. For most people, family is what you work for and career is what you work at. Both are important and both can be neglected due to a chronic migraine attack. Let’s first go over what happens biologically during a migraine and then we can discuss what to expect in each of the four stages of a migraine.
During A Migraine
Once you encounter a migraine trigger which catalyzes the migraine process, blood vessels in the brain will begin to expand and enlarge. As the blood vessels expand, they will release a chemical into the brain which will in turn attack the arteries in the brain. This attack will cause most of the pain the sufferer will experience for the next few days. The rest of the pain comes from the trigeminal nerve that develops an inflammation and throbs from within the brain; the pain experienced is unilateral and unquenchable without a success migraine treatment.
Set The Stage
There are four unique stages of a migraine headache and here is what you can expect in each one:
- Prodrome – This occurs in about 50% of the migraine patients and can bring with it symptoms such as: fatigue, strange food cravings, dizziness, loss of cognitive reasoning, hallucinations.
- Aura – Aura stage is only found in roughly 20%-30% migraine population. If you experience this stage, you will have blurred vision, zigzag vision or even blindness (temporarily) in one eye, which can really freak you out.
- Headache – It is quite obvious…lots and lots of unilateral, crawl into a ball, cry yourself to sleep pain.
- Postdrome – Most individuals experience this stage and it tends to feel more like you have been out partying and drinking all night. You get fatigued, nausea, vomiting and other hangover-type symptoms
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