Migraine is a neurological disease that is often minimized and stigmatized. However, migraine is the leading cause of disability in the United States for people under 50.
As someone that experiences and is diagnosed with this neurological condition, I feel the need to shine a light on it, especially with the countless misconceptions about the condition.
Often, simple headaches are mistakenly self identified as migraines. However, a migraine consists of many other symptoms beyond the obvious headache.
One symptom includes debilitating, throbbing, one sided head pain that can leave a person in bed for multiple days. This stage usually lasts at least four hours, and usually forces the person experiencing the migraine to lay down in a dark, quiet place and sleep until it wears off.
But the headache aspect of a migraine attack is only one part of the whole disease.
For some people, symptoms like fatigue, nausea, visual changes, vertigo, and sensitivity to light, sound, smell, et cetera are also present.
Personally, I experience sensitivity to bright light and vomiting when I am experiencing migraines.
I also experience visual changes, or visual aura, too. This is a symptom of ocular/retinal migraines.
People can experience various visual changes like flashes of light, scintillating scotoma (blind spots), heat waves, blurred vision, loss of color vision, and loss of depth perception. Daily life is often disrupted because of migraines, especially due to visual discrepancies. For example, one might be forced to pull their car over when driving because they have a blind spot.
Triggers for migraines vary from person to person, but some common triggers include stress, hormonal changes, certain medications, sleep changes, weather changes, overexertion, or even certain foods.
Some people have specific sensitivities to certain foods. Some of the most common migraine triggering foods include chocolate, caffeine, processed foods, and alcohol.
A common misconception is that people with migraine can simply just avoid foods that cause migraine attacks.
But it isn’t as easy as identifying a trigger food and avoiding it. Sometimes, a certain food alone won’t cause a migraine attack, but a combination of two foods might.
In other times, it may take days for a food to have the effect of causing a migraine attack, and at that point, it would be extremely hard to discern what exactly caused it.
In addition, the type of foods that triggers migraine varies greatly between individuals, so it really is like trial and error when trying to figure out food triggers.
Migraine remains extremely undiagnosed and untreated in at least 50 percent of migraine patients, and less than 50 percent of people experiencing migraine consults a physician.
Migraine affects more than one billion individuals worldwide each year, yet it is a condition that has been historically overlooked, and continues to be deeply stigmatized and misunderstood.
Understanding the condition means understanding that it is a chronic disease people navigate daily, even when they are not currently in a migraine attack.
Stigma towards the disease needs to stop, and people need to refrain from dismissing migraine attacks by using harmful comments like “It’s just a headache.”
This stigma is the cause of the underdiagnosed population suffering from migraine disease. The misunderstandings cause migraine to be socially invisible and not recognized by the public as a real issue.
Even most doctors fail to understand the complexities of this disease. Training for this disease is minimal and inadequate in medical and neurology schools, despite its high prevalence.
For those who experience migraine attacks frequently, migraines are a huge part of their lives. They can interrupt daily tasks and cause them to be unable to function in a work or school setting.
The severity of migraine needs to stop being minimized to headaches, because ultimately, migraines are so much more than just a bad headache.