In the beginning, spots or lines or colored lights may dance before your eyes. Soon a whole plethora of symptoms may ensue: redness, swelling, tearing, muscle contraction, hallucinations, irritability, depression, numbness, constipation or diarrhea and sometimes even a feeling of well-being! This is your warning.
Then the pain hits! It can range from minor discomfort to immobilizing agony and can last from minutes to days. The pain most likely occurs on only one side of the head along with nausea and vomiting.
This is the classic migraine that millions of people, including children, live with. The majority of sufferers are women.
Not A Tension Headache
The migraine is different from more common tension headaches that usually involve the whole head, come on suddenly and only include nausea and vomiting if they are very severe.
The Cluster Headache
Cluster headache attacks come on abruptly, with intense throbbing pain arising nigh in one nostril and spreading behind the eye on that side of the face. The attacks tend to occur from once to several times daily in clusters lasting weeks or even months. Without apparent reason the cluster subsides as quickly as it began. Men between 20 and 40 are most affected by them.
The Spine/Headache Relationship
The cause of migraines has been a mystery. New research reveals sufferers have abnormal nerve firings in the brain and spinal cord. This may be why chiropractic's traditional approach helps so many migraine sufferers and it dovetails with prior findings that headaches can be caused by problems in the spine, specifically the neck. This is called the cervicogenic headache. A study of 6,000 people who suffered from recurring headaches for two to 25 years showed that spine injury was the most important factor in the cause of the headache and should be suspected in every nonspecific case of headache.