Have you ever wondered how chronic migraines feel? Do you or someone you love struggle with this health problem each month?
Recurring and severe migraines can indeed affect your day-to-day activities. It can also occur with other issues such as vomiting, nausea, sensory sensitivity, and vertigo attacks. The worst part is that it can get triggered by the slightest changes in your environment. For example, a lot of people who experience chronic migraines report a weather change headache. Others experience severe throbbing pain in their head when they feel stressed.
So, as a migraineur, how do you cope when you experience chronic episodes? Learn more about it as we explore what it feels like when you often experience more than 15 migraine attacks each month.
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Did you know that about 4 million experience chronic migraine attacks in the USA? As we mentioned earlier, sometimes it can come in the form of a weather change headache. It can also get triggered by other factors such as:
Typically, a chronic migraine attack features similar symptoms to a regular migraine episode. These could include throbbing headaches, pain on a specific part of the head, aura, lightheadedness, and spinning sensations. You might also experience nausea and vomiting during an episode.
Some migraineurs who experience severe attacks note additional symptoms like:
Other patients note that their migraine problems also tend to happen along with other equally disabling conditions, including:
Migraines can originate from various things. One of which can be a neurological dysfunction in the trigeminal nerve. Your trigeminal is a nerve bundle located inside the skull and runs on both sides of the head. It innervates and stimulates most of the muscles along the face and head.
Unfortunately, some folks have trigeminal nerve problems, which tend to mess up the signal transmission between the nerve endings, receptors, and the brain. It often also triggers the different symptoms of a chronic head pain attack. Sadly, until the trigeminal nerve function gets restored, the problem might keep on bothering you, especially when you encounter migraine triggers.
As someone who deals with persistent migraine attacks, you must know by now the key factors that set off an episode. Some examples of these head pain triggers include the following:
Starvation can cause your blood sugar levels to plummet. When this happens, you might experience debilitating headaches. It could also result in dizziness and nausea as your body copes with the sudden drop of your energy levels.
Exposure to bright lights plus other similar visual signals can sometimes result in a head pain attack. If this is one of your chronic migraine triggers, you should minimize prolonged exposure to light sources such as bulbs, the sun, and reflections from car or bike mirrors.
Concerts, fireworks, and construction sites often produce loud and disorienting sounds. It’s best to stay away from these auditory stimuli. If you don’t have a choice, you can try damping the noise by wearing protective equipment such as earplugs.
Maintaining an active lifestyle comes in quite handy in curbing a migraine or headache's intensity and frequency. However, overdoing things could contribute to worse attacks.
Nothing is worse than dealing with a migraine trigger that you can’t fully control, such as the weather. Many migraineurs complain of a weather change headache, especially when seasons begin to change. It’s also quite common in states with variable weather conditions. If weather changes stimulate an attack, be sure to adjust your plans carefully. This way, you can avoid going out of the house and risk experiencing a severe bout of head pain.
If you have food sensitivities, we suggest being extra wary of your diet. Skip eating food products that cause adverse side effects like rashes or allergies. It would help if you also minimized eating cure food products like ham or prosciutto. Salty, cured, or preserved items cause a spike in your blood pressure (a factor that also contributes to headaches in migraineurs)
Dealing with chronic migraine attacks can be quite frustrating, especially if you don’t have a lasting or sustainable relief source. Thankfully, you can now tap into a natural and holistic way of addressing head pain through upper cervical care.
It’s a special branch of chiropractic practice that deals with neck bones. It may be useful if you have a history of injuries resulting from contact sports, accidents, or physical trauma to the neck. Essentially, this approach allows you gradually restore your body’s balance and vitality. It also encourages the affected body parts such as the brainstem and trigeminal nerve to heal faster in case of a lesion.
If you suspect neck bone misalignment or if you’re looking for a more definite way to resolve your headaches and migraines, maybe you can try working with a neck chiropractor. To begin experiencing relief, you must have your upper cervical bone alignment assessed. Once your chiropractor has a full grasp of the situation, he can recommend the best approach to restore normal spinal alignment.
Start addressing the root cause of your weather change headache and frequent migraine attack with upper cervical chiropractic care. Contact a nearby upper cervical doctor today!
TV show host Montel Williams describes how specific chiropractic care has helped his body.
The content and materials provided in this web site are for informational and educational purposes only and are not intended to supplement or comprise a medical diagnosis or other professional opinion, or to be used in lieu of a consultation with a physician or competent health care professional for medical diagnosis and/or treatment. All content and materials including research papers, case studies and testimonials summarizing patients' responses to care are intended for educational purposes only and do not imply a guarantee of benefit. Individual results may vary, depending upon several factors including age of the patient, severity of the condition, severity of the spinal injury, and duration of time the condition has been present.