About a year ago, I had a really bad migraine that I just couldn't shift. I'd had migraines before but, over the course of two weeks, this one kept coming back.
As a neuroscientist, whose research has covered what happens to the brain during migraine, I was determined to get to the root of the problem. I tried all sorts: I had my eyes tested, and I even went to the dentist to make sure it wasn't something going on with my teeth and causing a headache.
Eventually, I identified the culprit: stripes. It turned out that around the time the migraine had started, my wife had bought lots of stripy tops, some with tightly-packed black and white lines, which she'd taken to wearing. (We'll come back to why this triggered the migraine later.)
It is estimated that six million people in the UK suffer migraines. It seems to affect one in five women and one in 15 men, according to the NHS. (The higher rate in women is most likely due to hormones involved in the menstrual cycle.)
A migraine is not 'just' a bad headache. And not every really painful headache is a migraine.
While headaches can have different underlying causes (such as dehydration or eye strain), fundamentally they are triggered when blood vessels in the brain get bigger (dilate). This process, called vasodilation, is to bring more blood quickly to areas of the brain it thinks are in need. This stretches the blood vessel walls beyond comfortable limits, setting off their pain receptors.
While this blood vessel dilation happens in migraine, too, it is only part of the process. Migraine is a whole-body experience involving a complex pattern of changes in the brain that mean it can also involve nausea, vomiting, appetite changes, clumsiness, visual disturbances, sensitivity to light and fatigue.
Early warnings of a migraine
The first phase of a migraine is the 'prodrome' phase — a warning of what's to come. Here, there can be subtle behavioural changes which can occur a couple of hours or even days before the aura (a sensory disturbance that accompanies some migraines) and the pain of migraine starts properly.
You might yawn more, be less alert, have cravings or be hungrier than usual. Walking into shops with really bright lighting might unsettle you to the point of distraction.
Many sufferers are quite bad at spotting this stage. Recent work by Sanitaria Hospital in Madrid suggests that only a third of patients are good predictors, in that they could spot an impending migraine more than 50 per cent of the time.
(dailymail.co.uk)
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