Migraine: A Neurological Condition That's Not Just in Your Head

Transcript

• 00:13Migraine is far and away the most common debilitating primary headache disorder
• 00:18and it comes with a constellation of things beyond the headache pain
• 00:22that impact them and the impact their activities of daily living
• 00:25and affect their ability to do the things that they love most.
• 00:31We know that it’s from changes in the body and the brain chemistry
• 00:35and we know that genetics accounts for about half of all migraines
• 00:38and sometimes we think about the migraine as just the headache
• 00:43when really it goes well beyond that.
• 00:48Migraine is the type of headache that typically affects one side of the head
• 00:52and oftentimes are associated with nausea,
• 00:56vomiting, light sensitivity, sound sensitivity, smell sensitivity.
• 01:00Also, in terms of what the pain feels like to someone.
• 01:03Is it short, stabbing, dull, aching, throbbing?
• 01:07They don't feel well or they don't feel like they're their usual selves
• 01:10for the days before their migraine attack.
• 01:13Sometimes they're present physically,
• 01:15but they're not fully there.
• 01:17Sometimes people feel washed out,
• 01:18they don't feel themselves
• 01:20after the headache pain has gone away
• 01:21and sometimes also those same people would share that
• 01:24it took a while to speak up and have courage to talk about
• 01:28the migraine or their headache, in part
• 01:30because if they had in the past, it was sort of dismissed.
• 01:34It's just in your head.
• 01:35It's just a migraine.
• 01:36It's just a headache when it's not.
• 01:38It's something that profoundly affects someone,
• 01:41it profoundly effects their family.
• 01:48If people are taking over-the-counter medication to treat their pain
• 01:51multiple times a day or even on a daily basis,
• 01:54that tells me that there's something going on that we need to investigate further
• 01:57and paradoxically, over time, if people are taking daily,
• 02:01multiple times, daily as needed, pain medication,
• 02:04that can actually make the headache worse that they're treating
• 02:07and sometimes they can develop a new type of headache on top of that.
• 02:10But also that typically tells me that someone would benefit
• 02:13from a preventive medication or some other preventive therapy.
• 02:17In the last almost decade, there's been dozens of new treatments
• 02:21that have come out for migraine and other types of headache disease.
• 02:24Some of these are in completely new families of medications.
• 02:28Some of these are new formulations of medications
• 02:31that have been around for quite some time.
• 02:33Some of these are not medications at all.
• 02:35There's some really good evidence for some vitamins and supplements
• 02:39that can work really well to help prevent migraines
• 02:43and to help to reduce the severity of migraine attacks when people get them.
• 02:47There's neuromodulation devices.
• 02:49There's several of them on the market and there's more coming.
• 02:52They can be used for prevention.
• 02:54So use it every day or sometimes more than once a day
• 02:56and there's some of that you could use in the in the throes of a migraine attack as well
• 03:01Talk to someone about it.
• 03:03Bring it up.
• 03:04Headache and headache pain is not just in your head.
• 03:07It is very real.
• 03:08And if you bring it up to a doctor and they're dismissive,
• 03:11find someone else to talk to you about it
• 03:14because there are people out there that want to understand your pain,
• 03:16want to understand it so we can help treat it.
• 03:19You don't have to suffer in silence.