Migraine is a neurological syndrome that causes several symptoms, the most prominent symptom being the headache. Usually, migraine causes severe or moderate one-side and pulsating headache, which may last from four to seventy two hours. The other symptoms may include nausea and vomiting and a great sensitivity to bright lights and noise. A majority of the people having migraine experience a preceding aura, which gives a strange light and unpleasant smell.
Migraine can be classified into four types depending upon the intensity of the headache namely, no pain, mild pain, moderate pain and severe pain. Mild pain is the one that does not disturb the usual day-to-day activities, moderate pain exists but does not fully prevent usual activities and the severe pain disturbs all activities. The most commonly occurring type of headache is the migraine without aura wherein the patients suffer from headache with unilateral location and moderate or severe headache along with nausea and or high sensitivity to bright lights and sound.
Migraine without aura can be diagnosed if there are at least five attacks fulfilling the criteria such as untreated headache for six to forty eight hours, at least two symptoms of unilateral location, moderate or severe pain, obstructing routine physical activity, and pulsating quality. While experiencing a migraine without aura, there must be nausea or vomiting, or sensitivity to light or sound.
The next common type of headache is migraine with aura and people suffering from migraine with aura may also experience without aura. Migraine with aura is characterized by at least two attacks with visual symptoms, sensory symptoms and speech disturbance which are all fully reversible. The visual and sensory symptoms may affect just one side of the body and each symptom may last from 5 to 60 minutes.
Acephalgic migraine is a type of migraine in which the patient may experience other symptoms but not headache. Other types of migraine are abdominal migraine and menstrual migraine. The signs and symptoms of migraine vary from one patient to another and therefore, cannot be generalized. But still, there are four phases of migraine namely, prodrome, which occurs hours or days before the headache, the aura, which is just before the headache, the pain phase, which is the headache and the post drome.
The causes of migraine, known as triggers, can be many. They may be due to environment, behavior, infection, diet and so on. The treatment for migraine headaches may vary from simple remedies like applying hot or cold water to the head, getting adequate rest in a dark and silent room or a cup of coffee at the right time to over-the-counter medications. Naproxen is found to be effective in aborting migraine headache and a light or moderate headache can be controlled through paracetamol. A simple analgesic combined with caffeine may be of great relief.
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A tension headache on the other hand, affects the whole head and rarely lasts as long as a migraine.
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Migraine is a form of headache associated with vascular contraction. It makes patient hypersensitive and is identified by throbbing pain either in one-side of headache or in whole. It is caused by contraction in blood vessels and other chemical changes in brain
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