Migraine is really a brain disorder

[Allele]

From 2013, but new to me. I really wish Stanford was including a subgroup of ME migraineurs in their brain study, bc we're a huge subgroup of ME patients.

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/807274#vp_2

BOSTON, Massachusetts — Positron emission tomography of patients experiencing the premonitory phase of migraine, prior to the headache setting in, shows activation in several areas of the brain, indicating that migraine is a brain disorder and not a response to pain stimuli.

The results are significant in terms of understanding the neurobiology of migraine and could have future implications for drug treatment, said study author Peter James Goadsby, MD, PhD, professor, neurology, and director, Headache Program, University of California at San Francisco, and president, International Headache Society.

"This is an important step in solidifying our ideas that migraine is fundamentally a disorder of the brain, not a disorder of structures outside the brain," said Dr. Goadsby. "We were able to address the question that people have wondered about for many, many years, that is, what is the degree to which pain is driving the initial symptomatology — and we got clear answers to that."

 

[Skycloud]

I think a subgroup with headache would need to be very carefully defined.

I think a problem with a migraine subgroup is that it's such a common condition anyway. To what extent are the headaches people with ME have migraines, or a different kind of headache? My experience of headaches (of course I'm just one person) is that ME ones are different to my migraines.

As I understand it there are several types of migraine, and treatment is based on more than one idea of what is going on during what are called migraine. I think that migraine is, like asthma, cancer and CFS, a catch all word for a similar set of signs+symptoms with subsets.

@Allele, you've made me think, but I'm not sure I'm thinking clearly (fog)

 

[Squeezy]

I think that migraine is, like asthma, cancer and CFS, a catch all word for a similar set of signs+symptoms with subsets.

That's a good way to describe it, except I'd clarify that migraines can be very DIS-similar indeed! Some can paralyse you down half your body like a stroke! Most cause the most excruciating pain imaginable, but one type only causes psychedelic visual disturbances and nothing else (wish I had that).

So there are several types of migraine, but sufferers are generally offered the same drugs. They just have to try various ones within the group, (Triptans), to find what works.

As for us migraine sufferers with ME being a special subset? Well that would be we who got them AFTER onset of ME? I thought mine were due to the contraceptive pill. I swapped to a stronger pill and soon after got hit with them. A well-known side effect

But could equally have been the ME. What TERRIFIES me is that my 3 day migraine episodes are similar to what Whitney Defoe and other seriously ill ME patients experience continuously. The idea of it... That's what worries me. That similarly between them.

 

[Invisible Woman]

Migraines, at least for me, have changed over the course of my life.

I started experiencing them quite young. They were a definite type. Then when I was older and a doc recommended switching to a different type of pill I got clobbered with the three day horrors.

That was pre ME.

Luckily as I've aged the three day ones happen less often but I now get the psychedelic ones as @Squeezy so accurately described it.

Even though the light show may be pain free it still leaves me weirdly cognitively PEM'ed. An odd feeling.

I've always known that my migraines affect ME, but hadn't really thought about it the other way around.

 

[Squeezy]

Oh how awful, that switching medication caused your "three day horrors" @Invisible Woman . Do you mind sharing what you changed from, and to? Horrendous that you were damaged in this appalling way.

I can imagine feeling extremely discombobulated after a kaleidoscope migraine. Not so groovy. Why did people ever take LSD? <shudder>

My migraines are generally brought on by over-stimulation and energy usage. Too much conversation, TV, music, phone use, sun light, fake light, noise, walking, standing, excitement; ill advised combinations of the above . Anything except lying down quietly in a dark room, really.

They can hit out of nowhere too,
But nowhere near as often.

So I think my ME-causing-migraine connection looks pretty definite. I do wonder how many others get struck this way.

 

[Invisible Woman]

Thinking back @Squeezy, long before ME started my triggers were hormones, light, travelling, and overdoing it. Mind you, I was a very fit & active teen.

Yes, the horrors of the "just because" migraine! Do you get the ones that wake you during the night? Fine when you went to sleep,but in the early hours a migraine wakes you. You know there's a good chance if you take meds straight away and can manage to get back to sleep, it might have gone by morning.....but you feel too sick, dizzy & weak to get the meds....The work of an evil genius that one!

I'll look up the name of those meds @Squeezy and PM you.

 

[Squeezy]

No, oh lord, no! Woken up in the night by a migraine? @Invisible Woman I don't think I ever have. Waking up in the morning and it hitting soon after, yes. Groping for the pills, knowing I've slept through the warning signs that tell me the perfect time to take them, knowing I've missed the window and I'm in for it...

 

[sea]

@Squeezy and @Invisible Woman I can relate to both of you with your triggers and experiences of migraine. I’ve had them since a child but much more frequently since ME/CFS. Sometimes I get the pscyhedelic aura beforehand, sometimes I get confusion instead, to the point of having to ask my husband to get the meds for me because I can’t think straight.

 

[Squeezy]

@sea So sorry you're afflicted too. Another one, since a child . So sad for little you,back then.

I don't get an aura with mine, maybe that's why I'm spared the vomiting. Confusion is a new one to me. Ugh. Sorry to hear. Hugs.

 

[Invisible Woman]

Even though I've had the aura from the start I didn't always have the vomiting.

It seems there are quite a few combinations! Lovely !