Month: December 2005

Books & Products, Symptoms

Not Just a Headache: Migraine’s Other Symptoms

Kerrie Smyres

The usual description of migraine includes visual aura, one-sided throbbing pain, nausea, and sensitivity to light and sound. There’s a lot more to it than that. The following information, which comes from my very favorite migraine book, Migraine: The Complete Guide, is a list of the other symptoms of migraine. It’s organized by the phase that the symptoms they occur in and by which part of the body is involved. I’ve made a few changes to the information from the book; most noticable is that I’ve collapsed the book’s sections on aura and prodrome into one.*

Prodrome (the period before the pain begins)

Visual (aka aura)

  • a bright shape that spreads across the visual field of one eye and appears to block some or all of the vision; can be seen whether the eye is open or closed
  • flashes of light and color
  • wavy lines
  • geometric patterns
  • blurred vision
  • partial loss of sight

Sensory

  • numbness or tingling on the face or upper extremities
  • a sense that limbs are a distorted shape or size
  • smelling odors that aren’t actually present (like natural gas or something burning)

Motor

  • partial paralysis
  • weakness or heaviness in the limbs on one side of the body

Language

  • difficulty finding words
  • problems understanding spoken or written language

Cognitive

  • mental confusion
  • disorientation
  • transient global amnesia (similar to amnesia that follows a concussion)

Digestive

  • food cravings (particularly for carbohydrates, candy and chocolate)
  • stomach rumblings
  • constipation

Fluid disturbances

  • increased thirst
  • bloating/fluid retention
  • frequent urination

Mental/Personality

  • mood changes
  • irritability
  • high energy
  • lethargy

Headache Phase

Sensory

  • sensitivity to light and noise
  • intolerance of being touched
  • heightened sensitivity to odors

Digestive

  • nausea
  • vomiting
  • intolerance of food odors
  • loss of appetite
  • diarrhea
  • constipation

Skin

  • paleness
  • cold, clammy hands and feet
  • facial swelling
  • goose bumps
  • bloodshot eyes
  • black circles around eyes
  • sweating

Fluid disturbances

  • water retention
  • frequent urination

Respiratory

  • frequent yawning
  • sighing
  • hyperventilating
  • nasal congestion
  • runny nose

Mental/Personality

  • irritability
  • depression
  • anxiety
  • nervousness
  • difficulty concentrating

Circulatory

  • changes in blood chemistry
  • changes in blood pressure
  • blood vessel dilation
  • difficulty regulating temperature
  • changes in heart rhythms

Postdrome (24 hour following headache)

Cognitive

  • inability to concentrate

Respiratory

  • frequent yawning

Mood/Personality

  • fatigue
  • depression
  • euphoria
  • feeling of intense well-being
  • lethargy

Having the variety of chronic daily headache that is caused my migraine, I’m not convinced that these symptoms only occur in their respective phases. I certainly have different symptoms that don’t seem to be connected to severe headache pain. It could be that people with CDH have trouble knowing when they are in a particular stage or that we experience the symptoms more frequently than in these rigidly defined phases. I also wonder if people who have been diagnosed with tension-type headache experience similar additional symptoms, particularly the cognitive ones. (Don’t take anything in this paragraph as fact — these are my vaguely informed, non-medical musings.)

So you’re not crazy, losing your mind or faking it. Perhaps it’s a link to send to those who question your illness.

*Some sources maintain that an aura only encompasses the visual changes that can happen before a migraine. Others, like this book, include sensory, motor, language and cognitive difficulties as part of aura. The more common approach is that aura is only visual, but one of many symptoms of prodrome.

News & Research, Treatment

Using Brain Scan to Control Pain

Kerrie Smyres

In July, NPR did a story on a type of MRI of the brain that shows nerve activation when a person is in pain. The link to the study abstract didn’t work, so I removed it in yesterday’s housekeeping. Coincidentally, the study made news again this week when the results were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the study, pain researchers at Stanford used functional MRI (or fMRI) to show where pain occurs in the brain. The scans indicate where pain is activated and how it is being processed. To test participants’ responses for this study, researchers applied a painful amount of heat to participants’ hands, then divided participants into groups.

In one group, each member was put in the MRI to watch his or her own brain activity. Researchers provided members of this group with mental strategies for dealing with pain. Over time, group members developed an ability to control their responses to pain.

Other groups were either not shown scans but were given behavioral strategies to respond to cope with the pain, or were shown scans of different areas of the brain or other people’s pain responses. Members of these groups did not show a change in pain responses.

The study indicates that there may be a connection between being able to see pain activity in your own brain and reducing the pain. However, as with many of the studies that make the news, application of this treatment for control pain is years away. Further research must be done to support and better understand the study’s results and the equipment must be available in more facilities before these findings can be applied.

Recent Articles on the Study

Community

The Dark Side & Blog Housekeeping

Kerrie Smyres

Please don’t hate me; I’ve crossed over to the dark side. Perhaps I’m being dramatic, but I’ve suppressed my design sensibilities and added ads to the blog. I hope they’ll help cover the costs of keeping The Daily Headache running. I have little input on which ones wind up on the site, so please don’t assume that I endorse the advertised products.

On housekeeping…

I’ve moved sidebar items around. I’ll try extra-super hard to not switch things around on you again, but don’t hold your breath.

I spent most of yesterday fixing broken links in old posts. You shouldn’t notice a difference, but I’ve had to change the links for every Reuters article I’ve referred to. The stories are identical to the original ones, but they are on sites that I don’t know much about. I can vouch for the accuracy of these particular stories, but not of the websites they’re on.

Most of the URLs that you’ve put in the comments weren’t working because the sentence punctuation got mixed up in the URL. It’s a problem with Typepad, but the easy way around it is to put a space between any punctuation that’s by a URL. For example, www.thedailyheadache.com . instead of www.thedailyheadache.com. (Obviously it works fine here, but not in the comments.)

In August I posted on novels that have helped me escape and promised more would be forthcoming. I also said that the list would remain in the sidebar. I lied. I still read voraciously, but can’t keep up with the reviews and the list. Besides, it was another bit of clutter in the sidebar, so the list is gone.

Update: Thanks to Daniel’s suggestion, I’ve changed the first paragraph a bit to avoid invoking Google’s ire.