Things You Need to Know About Migraine Headaches

Migraines are a neurological condition that, besides causing severe headaches, is also responsible for multiple symptoms. While intense, debilitating headaches frequently characterize migraines, you might also experience additional symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, difficulty speaking, sensitivity to light and sound, and numbness or tingling.

Migraines can affect all ages and often runs in families. However, women are more likely to suffer from migraines than men.

What’s a Migraine and How Does It Feel like?

People describe migraine pains as pulsating, perforating, debilitating, pounding, and throbbing. However, migraines can also feel like a severe, dull, and steady ache. The pain starts as mild but can become moderate to severe if left untreated.

Migraine pain generally affects the forehead area on one side of the head but can also occur on both sides. Four hours is the duration of a migraine. Unfortunately, if you don’t receive migraine treatment or don’t respond to therapies, the pain can last for 72 hours or a week. If you have a migraine with aura, the pain may overlap with an aura and may never occur at all.

What Are the Types of Migraines?

Millions of Americans who suffer from migraines can usually feel pulsating or throbbing pain on one side of the head. Unfortunately, all migraine attacks are not similar and differ between every individual.

You might have a migraine with aura or a migraine without aura. Besides, the two might also experience brain stem aura, episodic migraine, chronic migraine, hemiplegic migraine, migraine without headache, abdominal migraine, menstrual migraine, ocular migraine, vestibular migraine, and ophthalmoplegic migraine.

You might find it challenging to determine which type of migraine affects you unless you seek migraine care near me to understand its root cause.

What Are the Symptoms of Migraine Headache?

Migraine symptoms can begin 24 to 48 hours before the headache. The Prodrome stage is the name of this condition which has symptoms like food cravings, depression, fatigue or low energy, frequent yawning, hyperactivity, irritability, and neck stiffness.

If you have a migraine with aura, it follows the prodrome stage. During the aura, you might have problems with your vision, sensation, movement, and speech. Some examples of the issues you might experience include difficulty speaking clearly, a tingling or prickly sensation in-your-face arms, and legs, seeing shapes, light flashes of bright spots, and temporarily losing your vision.

The following phase is known as the attack phase, which is most acute or severe when the migraine pain occurs. Symptoms of the attack phase can last from hours to days and vary between people. You might experience increased sensitivity to light and sound, nausea, dizziness or feeling faint, pain on one side of your head, pulsating or throbbing headaches, and vomiting.

After the attack phase, you will experience the postdrome phase when there are changes in mood and feeling. The modifications can range from feeling euphoric and extremely happy or tired and apathetic. You will also experience a mild and dull headache.

What Causes a Migraine Headache?

A definitive cause for migraine headaches hasn’t been identified by researchers. However, they believe the condition is due to abnormal brain activity affecting nerve signaling, chemicals, and blood vessels in the brain. Migraine triggers are also reported, including bright lights, dehydration, changes in barometric pressure, hormonal changes and women, excessive stress, skipping meals, using certain medications like oral contraceptives and nitroglycerin, et cetera.

When you experience a migraine headache, your doctor might recommend you keep a headache journal, writing down your activities, the foods you had, and what medications you took before the episode to help identify your triggers.

How does Richmond Urgent Care diagnose Migraine Headaches?

Urgent care in Richmond diagnoses migraines by listening to your symptoms and taking a comprehensive medical and family history besides performing a physical exam to rule out other potential reasons. They also take CT scans or MRIs to rule out other conditions such as tumors, abdominal brain structures, and stroke.

They might recommend Excedrin migraine, an effective over-the-counter treatment for dealing with moderate to severe migraines, because the medication has proven effective with many people. Excedrin is a combination of acetaminophen, aspirin, and caffeine and is reputed to provide relief with a single dose. Therefore if you are affected by migraine headaches, you can find relief from the problem by visiting Richmond urgent care for assistance.

Sunrise Urgent Care Center treats many patients with migraines providing effective remedies to counter the problem. If you are suffering from a similar situation, kindly schedule an appointment with this urgent care center for relief from the migraines.