Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?

here's your regular reminder that if you consistently, regularly get headaches, you are almost certainly having migraines, not regular headaches.

MOST recurrent headaches are migraine headaches.

"migraine" does not mean "extremely painful headache." it is a type and source of pain, not a degree of pain. migraines can also include some or all of the following: fatigue, sensitivity to light and sound, visual auras, nausea or vomiting, dizziness, cognitive impairment, etc. these symptoms can be mild or severe and it may actually be difficult to determine if you have them. (who wants a bright light in their eyes during a headache?? i thought that's just how headaches were lmao.)

this is important because while aspirin, NSAIDs like ibuprofren, and other over-the-counter pain meds can effectively alleviate migraine pain, getting diagnosed with migraines allows for a wider range of treatments and preventatives.

it's also important because, in my opinion, your average general practice doctor is not equipped to diagnose you with chronic migraine. don't go to one expecting them to. a neurologist with migraine specialty is a better option, although a regular doctor can still be useful if they listen to you lol.

my life would be miserable and unmanageable without sumatriptan. and i never would have gotten a prescription for sumatriptan if i hadn't gone to my GP and said, "i have migraines and want to try migraine medicine," even though at the time i wasn't 100% sure that was true.

if you have chronic headaches, they're almost certainly migraines. if no one has said that to you before, let me be the first. start treating your migraines.

multiple times in my youth, i went to the doctor expecting them to figure out and tell me if i had migraines. each time, the doctor asked, "do you see an aura?" and when i said no, they determined i must not be getting migraines. no one ever told me that only 20% of migraine sufferers experience auras. that means 80% don't, yet that is frequently used as important diagnostic criteria! what!

a book i recommend over and over is The Keeler Migraine Method by robert cowan. highly recommend if you're trying to figure your migraine situation out.

Migraines don't have to involve headaches! Turns out I've had migraines my whole life and I didn't know, because it doesn't cause headaches. Rather, I get

I chalked a lot of this up to autism and overstimulation.

I saw a neurologist and now I have medicine to treat my migraines. What I have are called ocular migraines.

Please look into migraines without headaches. You may be totally unaware that you have migraines.

Migraines without headaches are called silent migraines, and they’re absolutely a thing. For me they’re even more frequent than painful ones.

Here’s a test which, while not infallible, has led to multiple of my friends realizing that they had migraines and didn’t know it: Do you feel nauseated? Confused? Like you pulled an all-night even though you didn’t? Or are you feeling just generally off in a way that’s hard to define? Go into a really dark room and shut the door behind you. If whatever weirdness you were experiencing gets suddenly better as soon as you’re sitting in the pitch-dark, you almost certainly are having a migraine.

I’ve mistaken migraines for food poisoning and car sickness. I’ve had friends who have mistaken them for everything from seizures, to covid, to a poor night of sleep, to even just having had too much alcohol to drink. The symptoms of migraines are extremely varied, and very few people have all of them - but light sensitivity is common and a bit of a dead giveaway. If you have light-sensitive anything, bring it up with a doctor as a possible migraine symptom.