Migraine is Treatable
Migraine and Its Symptoms
Though mostly considered as a headache, migraine actually affects the whole body. Also, it is not a brain disease. The source is the body itself, namely the malfunctioning of autonomic nervous system.
Migraine symptoms may vary broadly but at the end of the day, all of them are temporary. No permanent damages. Patients may experience nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, sweating, exhaustion alongside the headache. Also patients might be unease, angry and develop hypersensitivity to stimulus like smell, noise and light. Furthermore, there might be other neurological symptoms like speech disorders, auras, weakness varying at levels from numbness to paralysis, imbalance, dizziness and rarely collapse.
How to Diagnose?
Migraine can only be detected by listening and examining the patient because neurological examinations do not show anything. Likewise, MRI and BT are also unable to detect any pathology to explain those headaches.
One important criteria is that the pain is severe enough to keep the patient away from doing their daily routines. If there are no headaches, then auras or vomiting attacks should be. Also, if the complaints are presenting themselves as attacks and the patient has no problems between those attacks, the problem can be migraine.
Can you talk about the phases and types of migraine?
The phases of migraine are prodromal, severe pain and postdromal. In prodromal phase, there might be fatigue, exhaustion, concentration deficit, rigidity on the back of the head, spasms, craving for some food. Also, in some patients auras might be observed. These auras not only cause visual symptoms but also numbness, temporary paralysis or speech disorders as well.
Severe pain phase usually is about a one-sided, throbbing, medium-severe headache. And in the postdromal phase, the pain is reduced to 0 gradually and patient begins sleeping exhaustedly. Rarely, they can begin feeling energetic again and can get back to their normal life.
The most common type of migraine is the one without aura, a.k.a. common migraine. In this one, headache is the lead actor while in the one with aura, that job belongs to neurological complaints. Following the aura, comes headaches. Sometimes, the whole attack phase might be about auras. Basilar, confusional, ophtalmoplegic, hemiplegic and abdominal migraine are the rare versions.
Some women have more severe migraine pain during their menstrual period. Why is that and what to do to ease it?
Migraine is mostly seen in fertile age women and especially during their period. Because the sudden hormonal changes trigger migraine. One can easily blame it on the hormones but the real reason is the imbalance of them. Gokmen Approach helps finding the reason causing the imbalance and eliminates the bloating, anger, pain etc.
Migraineur women should be not using hormonal drugs like birth control or morning after pills.
Why Women?
Because women are more sensitive and migraine feeds itself on this. Also c-sections, abortions, intrauterine devices and the fact that pregnancy increases the number of decayed teeth play major role in fertile age migraine.
Usually, people believe that migraine has no treatment and thus, the patient must suffer from it until death. Is this true? If not, what is the treatment?
Even though migraine is treatable, the common myth “Migraine has no treatment. You simply have to learn to live with it” is so hard to break.
There is no such thing that stops the migraine for a lifetime. But some integrative medicine applications, mainly acupuncture and neural therapy, have significant effects. To obtain a scientific and long-term solution, one needs to focus on the reasons. My approach, directly focuses on the reasons since it is based on the motto “If there is pain, something must be causing it.” And once the reasons are discovered, first them and then the migraine itself get fixed.
What Does Trigger Migraine? What Should be Done?
Stress, sleep deprivation, oversleeping, hunger, hormonal changes during the menstrual period, southwester, some foods and even happiness. However, external factors are not the reason, they are just the triggers. The real cause of migraine is the bio-electrical system of the body.
GONUL MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 2015