Chronic migraine is not just about very bad headaches. It is an illness that affects your quality of life. It makes it difficult for you to do anything perfectly. Your foremost requirement is a quiet, dark room to get rid of the condition. Migraine is treatable but you have to focus on reducing the frequency and severity of its episodes. Treating symptoms of Chronic Migraine include ways making it less disruptive.
What is a Chronic Migraine?
Frequent and long-lasting headaches with shifting symptoms, are known as Chronic migraines. Thus it is hard to describe where one migraine may end and the other start. Though migraine is not a simple headache, chronic migraine includes both migraine and headaches. Migraines and headaches are totally different conditions.
According to studies, headaches cause unpleasant sensations in your head and you feel disruptive but they are not severe enough to disturb your daily activities. Its common type is known as tension-type headache that affects your head or face, but doesn’t affect your brain.
On the other hand, experts say that migraine is a severe pain that indirectly affects your brain.it is severe enough to disrupt your daily routine and activities. Migraine makes it difficult for you to go about your life as you would under ordinary circumstances.
Is Chronic Migraine Common?
Research showed that 15 to 18% of the world’s population is affected by migraine. However the percentage of people affected by chronic migraine is less than that. Thus, chronic migraine is not a common illness.. Experts say that 2 to 3% of people around the world experience symptoms of this condition.
Another study has revealed that chronic migraine affects more females. it usually starts to appear near the puberty stage while becoming less frequent as you age. Might Chronic migraine hap[pens reality throughout your lifespan and it totally vanishes after menopause.
Symptoms of Chronic Migraine
Symptoms of chronic migraine are almost similar to episodic migraine. However, chronic migraine usually lasts for longer and occurs more often. It also involves severe headache episodes. You can identify the chronic migraine if you have:
- Maximum 12 to 15 days in a month with a severe headache or migraine, which must happen for three months consecutively.
- 8 to 10 days per month with headaches similar to migraine symptoms and it also should happen for three consecutive months.
Migraines are not the same as headaches and they appear in different forms. Its symptoms also vary in different stages. It happens in four stages. However, it is not necessary that every migraine involves all the four stages.
Stages if migraine include:
- Prodrome: In this pre-migraine stage, you may feel subtle differences that hints that a migraine is going to happen.
- Aura: This stage indicates that a migraine attack is disrupting areas of your brain.
- Headache: At this stage your brain experiences severe pain.
- Postdrome: After effects of migraine can be felt at this stage. It is commonly described as “migraine hangover”.
Chronic migraine include the following symptoms:
- In a Migraine without aura that lasts between 2 to three days.
- Migraine headache episode may meet at least two of the following criteria:
- Pain gets moderate to severe.
- Pain on one side of your head, left or right.
- Pain that worsen with even basic levels of activity including going up stairs or walking.
- Pain that has a pounding or pulsing feel.
- A headache episode that must have one of the following symptom
Vomiting.
Nausea.
- Sound sensitivity (phonophobia) and light sensitivity (photo phobias).
In a migraine with aura, one or more following types of symptoms should appear:
- One aura symptom spreads gradually over ten minutes or more.
- Each aura symptom lasts 10 to 60 minutes.
- A headache episode occurred at the same time.
- Two or more aura symptoms occur one after the other.
- One aura symptom happens one-sided.
For your convenience, the different aura of migraine are jotted below:
- Brain-stem means balance issues, tinnitus, loss of coordination, or vertigo , and digestive problems, such as constipation or diarrhea.
- Speech means difficulty speaking or understanding others’ talk.
- Visual means flashing lights, haze zig-zag-like areas surrounding the center of your vision.
- Motor means hemiplegia causing one-sided weakness or paralysis affecting your face or any other body part.
- Touch means numbness or tingling.
- Retinal means partial or total blindness.
Causes of Chronic Migraine
Researchers claimed that chronic migraine has genetic initiatives. This means you’re more likely to have migraines if your parents or any biological reality had this condition. They also told about several factors and processes that contribute to migraine, such as:
- Brain chemistry changes, like variations in the levels of serotonin and neurotransmitters.
- Changes occur in your body princesses and the effects of pain on your feelings of pain.
- Blood flow changes occur in your brain due to narrowing or opening of blood vessels.
- Temporary changes that make it difficult for brain cells to send and receive impulses.
- Incorrect signaling generated from nerve clusters near your eyes or head.
Risk Factors
Factors increasing the risk of developing chronic migraine include:
- Mental health conditions, including anxiety, stress or depression.
- Other chronic conditions, such as pain related illnesses like fibromyalgia.
- Obesity.
- Sleep disorders like sleep apnea, insomnia or hypersomnia.
- Head and brain injuries.
How Migraine Transforms into Chronic Migraine?
Simple migraine can be transformed into chronic migraine due to some processes. Expats are trying to understand these processes. However, some researchers explained that overuse of several migraine treatment procedures may have contributed to this transformation. The overuse doesn’t mean the overuse of a substance or drug but it refers to use of medications that aren’t habit-for long. Excessive use of medications is also a trigger for converting the simple form to chronic form, if you have an episodic migraine.
Complications of Chronic Migraine
There are several possible complications of chronic migraine, including:
- Aura-related seizures.
- Status migrainosus, a condition that lasts for two to three days.
- Heat attacks.
- Strokes.
Diagnosis of Chronic Migraine
A combination of approaches can help in chronic migraine diagnosis. Healthcare providers starts its diagnosis with neurological examination. The Healthcare providers also ask questions about your health history, life routine activities and dietary habits to diagnose the cause of the condition. They generally ask questions, like:
- If your headaches involve other symptoms, like sound or light sensitivity.
- Stress or anxiety level or anything exposing you to stress or anxiety.
- What are your sleep habits or how much sleep do you do each day?
- What the headache feels like and what is the exact location of pain in your head.
- How severe is the pain?
- If you ever had a migraine before and how often do they occur?
- If you have any trigger of migraine such as sounds, smell, beverages, food or fragrances.
- If you consume beverages like coffee or soft drinks in large quantities.
Specific Tests to Diagnose Chronic Migraine
Different diagnostics, including computed tomography (CT) scan or diagnostic imaging scans are recommended to diagnose some life-threatening conditions, like stroke, or hemiplegia. However, in some emergency situations when your chronic migraine reaches a life-threatening level, a magnetic resonance imaging scan (MRI) is recommended.
Your healthcare provider can suggest effective tests to diagnose the condition,depending on your symptoms.
Treatment and Management of Chronic Migraine
Chronic migraine have the same treatment options, which are used for migraine. medications are the first step of treatment which are available with two types of treatment approaches:
- Preventive Approach: Medications used to make the migraine symptoms less frequent or less severe.
- Rescue Approach: These reductions help rescue you from chronic migraine by shortening the duration of the episode.
Preventive Medications
These medications are effective to treat chronic migraine because they help reduce the severity of pain. These medications include:
- Antiseizure medications like topiramate or valproic acid.
- Calcium channel blockers, like flunarizine or verapamil.
- Antidepressants, including venlafaxine or nortriptyline.
- Beta-blockers, including propranolol or atenolol.
- Angiotensin II receptor blockers, like candesartan.
Rescue Medications
These medications help shorten the migraine episode and make it less frequent. These medications are not completely safe to use and their overuse can lead to worsen the symptoms of chronic migraine. These include:
- Naproxen.
- Aspirin.
- Acetaminophen, usually known as panadol, or paracetamol.
Sometimes, healthcare providers recommend over-the-counter migraine medication in combination with caffeine. However, the best way is to talk to your healthcare provider about whether you should take or avoid caffeine-containing products for chronic migraine symptoms relief.
Other types of medications used to manage the symptoms of chronic migraine include:
Triptan Medications
These are the most important type of medications including:
- Zolmitriptan.
- Naratriptan.
- Almotriptan.
- Frpvatriptan.
- Sumatriptan.
- Eletriptan.
- Rizatriptan.
However, excess use of these medications is not recommended by the provider because its over use contributes to transforming simple migraine to chronic migraine.
Ergotamine
These medications affect your brain signal processing. They also cause narrowing of blood vessels in your brain that slow down the pain signals.
Combination and Controlled Medications
A combination of NSAID with a controlled medication like a barbiturate or a painkiller can be used for treating the condition but in most cases this combination makes the chronic migraine worse. Therefore they aren’t commonly used to treat the condition.
Medical Procedures
A few medical procedures are also recommended to manage the condition, including:
Transcranial Magnetic stimulation (TMS): Your brain’s electrical activity is influenced by using a magnetic field. This may relieve the pain.
Nerve Stimulation: In this treatment option the three types of nerves are used. These are:
- Supraorbital nerve on your forehead.
- Vagus nerve.
- Occipital nerve at the back of your head.
Alternative Treatments: Acupuncture or acupuncture-like-medicines can also help chronic migraine. These are not common but many certified professionals offer this treatment at their clinics.
Prevention
It is not possible to prevent chronic migraine because experts do not know the exact cause of this condition. . However, the risk of developing the conditions can be reduced but the people having genetic link with the conditions are less likely to get relieved through the precautionary measures.
Thus, you can reduce the risk of developing the chronic migraine by reducing the chance that your medications contribute to the transformation of episodic migraine to chronic one. You can get medical assistance from your healthcare provider while using medications. You can reduce the risk of transformation of episodic migraine to chronic migraine by using medication in the correct proportion.
How to Take Care of Yourself while Living with Chronic Migraine?
There are a lot of things can do to take care of yourself if you have chronic migraine:
Manage your Lifestyle: Your level of physical activity and eating habits directly affects your chronic migraine. Sometimes physical activity worsens the condition. Maintaining your weight and avoiding excess weight can help reduce the chance of developing the condition. Similarly, sedative lifestyle and obesity act as triggers to increase the possibility of getting the condition worsen.
Learn your Triggers: Try to learn about the triggers that contribute to worsen conditions. Once you find them, find the ways to minimize them. This may help reduce how often you have migraines. This is a key way to convert chronic migraine to episodic migraine.
Turn on to Technology: Your smartphone has apps that log and track migraines. These are free apps. You can use these apps to warn you of potential triggers like change or air pressure, change in barometric pressure or air pollution.
Conclusion
Migraine or chronic migraine is different from a headache. Chronic migraine is the worst form of migraine that affects your life activities.its symptoms such as unbearable pain, nausea and sensitivity to sound and light make your life miserable and you cannot perform your life activities. People usually search for a dark, quiet and comfortable room when exposed to chronic migraine. But this cannot stop it. It helps them only from being even worse. It is difficult to explain your painful feelings you are experiencing during migraine.
However, it is a blessing that migraine can be treated. Making small changes to your lifestyle, eating habits can reduce the severity and frequency of chronic migraine.
