What is migraine?
Migraine is one of the most common debilitating conditions across the globe - one in seven people will experience a migraine at least once in their lives.
It is vital to understand that migraine is a long-term (what doctors often call “chronic”) neurological condition. Migraine is not “just a headache”. Migraine attacks may well come with headaches, which may be mild to severe. However, there are so many more symptoms that come along with migraine that affect us, and these are often the most debilitating aspect of the condition. We feel nauseous, we can’t bear the sound of people chattering, we can’t process speech, our brains are in a thick mist, we feel like the room is spinning uncontrollably, or we just need to lie down. Often friends, family or colleagues may wonder why we can’t just keep going with our migraine. Why do we need to have time off work or miss out on special events? Why can’t we just drink some water and have some paracetamol?
Sometimes we may have a different type of migraine where we just feel very tired, maybe we can get on with our day but we just aren’t functioning as normal. This may confuse us, and others, into thinking that the condition is only minor. It also means that some people never seek help for their headaches, and continue to suffer these regularly through many years of their lives. So much time is lost to these attacks that the World Health Organisation has listed migraine as the second most disabling condition in the world!
The symptoms going on the the brain and body of the person experiencing this neurological disruption are often not visible on the outside. You can’t test for them or see them on scans. All we know when we are having one is we want it to stop.
What I do know, is that the person having the migraine attack, certainly wishes they were not suffering so badly and feeling so debilitated! Who would ever choose to feel so awful? There is a whole cascade of chemical and electrical changes going on in the brain that are causing the brain to malfunction.
