Do you suffer from migraine or are you unsure whether you have a migraine or headache? There are specific symptoms of migraine which can help you to recognize the difference. For example, the place where the headache occurs, or the cause of your headache. To give you insight into where headache stops and migraine begins, we will describe the symptoms migraine and sum up possible causes of migraine. Furthermore, we will describe treatments, which can influence your migraine without medication.
Symptoms migraine: symptoms of migraine
To begin, migraine is characterized by a dull headache, often at one side of your head. Oftentimes it starts early during the day and gets worse as the day continues. If you then have a migraine attack, you can hardly do anything anymore because the headache is so severe. If you have a normal headache, you will still be able to go about doing your daily activities, but you are just very tired at the end of the day. With a migraine this is not the case. The headache is so painful that you can, in most cases, no longer continue doing whatever it was that you were doing, and that it is best if you stay in bed for the rest of the day. Many people also find it difficult to deal with light during a migraine and sleep until the headache passes. You may not sleep too much when you have a migraine, either, because this in turn can cause a migraine. It thus often is a vicious cycle of headache which is difficult to get out of.
Symptoms migraine: causes of migraine
First of all, it is important to note that migraine can be caused by something medical, but that your mental state also has a large influence on your headache and the frequency of the attacks. If can, for example, be so that the blood stream in your head is not optimal, and that this causes the migraine. Furthermore it might also be so that something is wrong with the oxygen delivery to the brain in migraine. In certain cases it can even be so that your metabolism has an influence on your migraine. But what is interesting to note is that 60% of people who suffer from migraines, also suffer from tension headaches. This means that over 60% of the people who suffer from migraine, also suffer from headache which is caused by tension in our body. Stress, anxiety, or other psychological mechanisms can cause this tension. If you experience major stress, this namely will cause you to have a tense neck, which can cause tension headaches after a while. It is also a well-known phenomenon that many girls with depression during their teenage years develop migraine. In a depression, the head is namely affected a lot, and it can be so that they develop migraine after some time due to the amount of worrying they do. This does not stop when you treat the depression, but has in many cases required several years to treat. In some cases it does not even fully disappear at all.
Symptoms migraine: treatment of migraine
Whether your migraine is caused by something physical or mental, it is always useful to deal with depression or stress when you have a migraine. Even if you do not experience tension headache, it can be so that the stress worsens your symptoms of migraine. 15 Minutes 4 Me is an online self-help program which guides you in the quick and efficient treatment of your stress It will help you to create new habit, which will make it so that stress is reduced and stays away in the long-term.
Symptoms migraine: take the stress test
If you want to know to what extent stress might influence your migraine or even to what extent stress might partake in the development of migraine, you can take the free stress test here!
