National Migraine Awareness Month
By Don Williams
Its National Migraine & Headache Awareness Month . No-body likes headaches, so this month we will discuss some of the different types of headaches that we see people suffer from.
Headaches range from the benign to the catastrophic. Good practitioners should be able to identify and diagnosis the different headaches into what they can treat with conservative measures and what required urgent referral to hospital.
Types of headaches
A very basic classification is whether headaches are simple or serious. There are more than 30 different types of headaches and close to 10 different types of migraines. They all have their own characteristics.
Firstly, Pathological Headaches
These are as a result of tumours, bleeds, clots, dural lesions, vascular lesions and other serious conditions.
Mostly, these pathological headaches will have red flags. These are signs and symptoms, that alert your practitioner to the seriousness of the condition. These headache warrants further investigation. When you have never had headaches before, or the headache, description is, “worst headache in my life”, “my head is exploding”, “thunderclap” are all serious indicators. Loss of consciousness, loss of vision, vomiting, dizziness are also important signs. If you have these signs, further investigation is needed, and generally, urgently.
We have unfortunately see a good deal of pathological headaches that have not been correctly diagnosed or managed by help professionals, which have had significant consequences, including death as a result. As practitioner, of Institute of Sports and Spines, if we suspect a bleed or a tumour, we generally refer for brain scans early rather than adopt a wait and see position. Not too many patients are concerned about a couple of hundred dollars if it might save their life.
Simple headaches
There are loads of different simple headaches; sinus, stress/anxiety, sensitivity, cluster and cervicogenic to name a few. So lets focus on Cervicogenic headaches.
These are benign and are related to tension in the neck and base of skull. They will usually respond well to conservative treatment; Chiropractic can be useful in treating joint restrictions in the upper cervical spine. Additionally, research shows that the correlation between cervical manipulation and stroke is either non-existent or very low (1 in 2 million). Additional, Remedial massage, acupuncture and physiotherapy may be helpful.
Migraines
The international Headaches society classifies migraines as having at least two of; one sided, moderate to severe, throbbing and aggravated by movement and having one of; nausea, vomiting, photophobia or phonophobia and the headache lasts for 4 to 72 hours.
The reason that migraines can mimic stroke is that they are thought to cause constriction of the blood vessels in the brain, which starve the area of blood. Therefore, the symptoms are a result of the impacted region of the brain.
As mentioned earlier, there are loads of different types of migraines; common, classic, basilar artery, hemiplegic, opthalmoplegic, cluster, Saturday morning, abdominal, silent. Each type of migraine has its own signs and symptoms.
Saturday morning migraines are interesting, common in work-a-holics and often present on the weekend or start of a holiday when the stress comes off, the system feels overloaded. Evidently, simple solution if to work out how to address the stress and tension.
Classic Migraines – these usually have an aura, which is a visual disturbance (flashing, spotting, tunnelling of vision) which starts around 15 minutes before the migraine itself. Classic migraines will sometimes respond to upper neck spine treatment. Additionally, they will commonly have chemical or environmental triggers. These may be caffeine, alcohol, dark chocolate, aged cheese, MSG, almonds, altitude changes, weather changes, flickering lights, strong smells. It can be tedious, but doing an elimination diet to try to get stability then reintroducing foods, triggers to identify the cause can be very effective.
Common migraines are similar to classic, but usually don’t have an aura and far less commonly have chemical triggers. They will usually respond well to conservative treatment.
So, this has been a very brief look at headaches and migraines. So during National Migraine Awareness Month, If you have any questions about migraines or headaches and the potential of responding to treatment or requiring further investigation make an appointment with us to talk it through.
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