It’s almost time for the Migraine World Summit! Now that the summit is an established part of the fight against migraine, some people may wonder why we keep coming back.
This brief video is worth showing to your family and friends to give them an idea why the summit is so valuable. Check it out, and share! Remember, you can register for free right here. This year’s summit is the 20th – 27th of March.
… By the way, do you want to learn more about those 10 year impact statistics and where they come from? Click here for more…
Last year the well-known medical journal Headche published a study about migraine in the United States that was disturbing, to say the least. It seems that all the new awareness of migraine hasn’t had the impact that many hoped it would.
First of all, looking back over 30 years, the researchers found that the prevalence of migraine hasn’t changed much. About 13% or so of the population have migraine. In a group of 100, about 73 of those would be women, and 26 would be men.
Now, if you believe that migraine is a difficult-to-treat genetically based disease, you might say, “Sure, the number of people with migraine may not change much. But we’ve learned so much more about how to treat them – so these people now have better treatments, and so fewer and less severe attacks!”
Except, the data isn’t telling us that either.
Using the MIDAS test, which measures disability from migraine, the researchers found that the trend is generally toward more disability, not less. This chart gives you an idea how many people with migraine are suffering with moderate/severe disability.
(Note – the study only had data for the years shown, so the graph is a smoothed-out estimate.)
It looks bad – and it is. However, we should note that there are some possible weaknesses in the study. For example, the estimates are only as good as the actual reports we get. Is it possible that more people are taking migraine seriously? More people are seeing their doctors?
Is the (slight) downward trend we see starting in 2018 a sign of things to come?
Maybe. But the results are still disturbing. The fact remains that the percent of migraine patients with significant disability almost doubled between 2005 and the most recent measurement!
Why aren’t we making more progress? Dr. Josh Turknett made some comments in December to consider. You can watch his video for yourself, but here are some points he made:
Preventative medications often either don’t work, or only work temporarily.
Abortive medications are also of limited use, often leading to – more abortive medications, and worse migraine disability.
He also implies (rightly, I think) that lifestyle changes are under-appreciated, to say the least. Many specialists may have better knowledge of migraine medications, and even better medications, but they’re still over-focused on prescribing medications and under-focused on things like diet.
By the way, I would recommend Dr. Turknett’s book to you – The Migraine Miracle. It’s a great place to start if you want to get beyond “the next pill” in your migraine treatment.
I would add some other thoughts about why we’re not doing as well as we could be in migraine treatment.
It could be argued that we have better, more targeted medications for migraine today. Although these medications seem to help some who have not been helped by other treatments, statistically speaking they also help those who might already be helped by another medication. In other words, saying that a certain medication may help 10% of migraine patients is not to say it will help another 10%. If that were the case, migraine would have been virtually eradicated by now.
The hype does not always match the reality. New medications come with new side effects, and they do not help everyone.
The hype can also take the focus away from lifestyle changes. There will always be a “new and better” migraine medication on the horizon. Don’t get me wrong – I think that research should continue, and that these medications may be helpful for certain people at certain times. But lifestyle is an incredibly powerful tool – to ignore it means that migraine will only get worse.
Having been involved in migraine research and advocacy for many years, I have seen many people who have found relief. The trend may be disturbing, but the trend does not have to be you. There is hope, and knowledge is an important step.
So even in the area of new medications and research of future medications, I do see a benefit. However, I agree that if we don’t take a serious look at the incredible healing power of lifestyle changes, the situation will not get better.
Here we are at the end of another year! It’s been a year of the unexpected for me, but maybe every year is like that.
But let’s look back at some of the key posts from the past year that you might have missed. I hope this site has been a help to you, and that it will continue to give you information and tips for better health!
This year I’ll put the posts under certain categories…
But a study published last month reminds us that aura is not always visual. This particular study took 272 patients who had migraine with aura – that is, according to the IHS classification, “Recurrent attacks, lasting minutes, of unilateral fully-reversible visual, sensory or other central nervous system symptoms that usually develop gradually and are usually followed by headache and associated migraine symptoms.”
So among this group, just how common were the various aura symptoms?
As you might guess, visual aura was by far the most common at 96.3%.
But the interesting thing was that many patients experience more than one kind of aura (though not necessarily at the same time).
Next was sensory aura – also very common among aura patients, at 33.1%. Sensory refers mostly to “paresthesia”, which is a feeling of numbness or a pricking sensation – “pins and needles”.
Unlike visual aura, which, of course, you “see”, sensory aura can be in different parts of the body. Most often it was felt in an arm or on one side of the face, but it may also be in a leg or even the tongue.
Almost as common was speech and/or language aura, at 25.6%. This includes an inability to name objects or recognize names (anomia), and less commonly actual difficulty in speaking, resulting in slurred speech (dysarthria).
More rare but still significant was motor aura at 1.8%. It’s hard to draw too many conclusions with such a small group in the study, but this would include paralysis or weakness, in this case in one or two arms.
More common was a type of aura associated with a particular kind of migraine – brainstem aura. Migraine formerly known as “basilar migraine”, migraine with brainstem aura may include various kinds of aura, such as vertigo, speech/language aura, double vision, even a reduced level of consciousness (get an overview of migraine with brainstem aura here).
Brainstem aura was reported in 8.5% of these patients.
One of the most interesting aspects of this study was that patients reported relapses – that is, 13% of patients noted that their aura symptoms returned within 24 hours.
Although the study did talk about typical treatments, it would be interesting to do a further study on which treatments were most effective for various kinds of aura (if there is any difference in effectiveness). There is still a lot of disagreement about what tends to work best.
Your turn! Leave a comment – which of these have you experienced? Are there other migraine symptoms that you have noticed? Do you have more than one kind of aura at the same time, or during the same attack?
Another study came out this year linking high blood pressure (hypertension) with migraine. But not for everyone.
The study, published in July, found the link only in women – however, the researchers noted that the number of men in the study was small, so a larger study may show a risk for men as well.
The link was specifically related to diastolic blood pressure. When your blood pressure is taken, it will have two numbers – a higher number and a lower number. The higher number is more commonly linked to cardiovascular problems, but both numbers are important and both numbers can be “high”. The lower number is the pressure of blood vessels “at rest” – diastolic blood pressure. You can see a typical chart of numbers here.
Essentially, higher diastolic numbers meant a higher chance that that particular woman also suffered from migraine.
The link between migraine and stroke and other cardiovascular problems seems to be well established. But we’re still learning just how to understand the connection. The fact that only the one blood pressure number related to migraine tells us that we may need to look at “non-traditional” numbers when we investigate migraine and heart problems.
Meanwhile, at the very least this study is another link between migraine and hypertension. While you’re looking for effective migraine treatment, it’s also important that you take care of your heart. A healthy lifestyle should help with both headache and heart issues.
