Dealing With Headaches

Perhaps “auras” is a misleading name. When most people hear the word “auras”, they think of various halo-like colors around the head or body, maybe even the images from Kirlian photography. But if you have migraines, “auras” take on a whole new meaning.

What Are They?

Auras usually are a visual hallucination of some sort. This warns the migrane sufferer that a migraine is on the way. The most common auras are flashes or huge wiggly shining shapes. When I had my first aura, it looked as if the lower half of my left eyeball was under water. I had no idea what was going on, until my first migraine hit full force. Then, the aura was gone, but I had a lot more to worry about.

Some people don’t get shining shapes or the illusion that they are partially under water. Some people’s vision blacks out or clouds substantiably. Whatever form it takes, the migraine aura is impossible to ignore.

The aura itself usually isn’t painful — it’s just very strange and even disorienting. It can happen about ten to fifteen minutes before the migraine pain first collides into your consciousness. You can use the aura as a warning that a migraine is coming and can either take preventative medicine or dive for cover.

Very rarely, the aura isn’t visual. It manifests as a loud sudden ringing in the ears. It can also effect your sense of balance, making you very dizzy, even if you don’t have any ringing ears or hallucinations. Some people even have a sudden difficulty speaking or even experience partial facial paralysis (parasthesia).

Why Do Auras Happen?

Auras only happen to about 15% of migraine sufferers. And they do not occur for every migraine of your life. You can have auras before migraines for years, and then they’ll just suddenly stop. You could spend all of the migraines in your life completely aura-free.

It is not known for sure why auras happen. Although it is thought that the eyes are only sometimes effected by chemical changes in the brain going on that fires the brain into migraine pain, why it happens only some of the time is unclear.

One of the theories is that migraine auras are caused by slow wave elctrical impulses that creep across the brain, causing general mayhem in the senses. Then, after being barrages by these impulses, the brain areas then go through a long period of being unusually still. It is thought that the back of the brain controls our vision, so any electrical impulse waves going across the back of the brain will screw up your eyesight. Could the flashing or blurry hallucinations actually be of an electrical impulse? Who knows?

Hope this helps.