Dealing With Headaches

It’s no surprise that often migrainers become extremely sensitive to sounds, light and sometimes tastes during migraine attacks. I had suspected that migrainers could get super-sensitive to touch as well, because of my Mom’s unusual comment when she has a migraine that “My hair hurts.”

Well, Mom, You’re Not Alone

A recent study published in the April 22, 2008 issue of Nuerology found that migraineurs have yet another item to add onto their misery list. 16,573 people participated in the massive study, of which over 11,000 were diagnosed migraineurs, and nearly 1500 were “probable migrainerus” (ie — they hadn’t gone to the doctor yet, but display all the symptoms of migraines) and 3345 people just had “headaches”. About 68% of the lot had some skin owies when having a migraine or headache.

The practical upshot of all of this is that migrainerurs often find normal tasks like wearing jewelry, brushing their hair or rubbing your head as “excruciating”. The technical name for this sudden extreme skin sensitivity is allodynia. This was seen to happen to those not only with chronic head pains but also to those who fell into these categories:

• Women diagnosed with migraines
• Obese people diagnosed with migraines
• People diagnosed with the double whammy of migraines and depression

So?

One of the good points of this study is that it vindicates my Mom’s statement that when she had a migraine “her hair hurts”. We teased her about that when I was a kid, and do I feel guilty about that now. Perhaps migraineurs with skin sensitivity will be taken seriously now by both doctors and family members. As to treatment for this symptom, no recommendations were made other than:

“More importantly, this condition may be a risk factor for migraine progression, where individuals have migraines on more days than not. Identifying risk factors for progression is a very important public health priority. For example, it may be that individuals with allodynia should be more aggressively treated in order to prevent migraine progression, as well as to decrease this sensitivity on the skin.”

Obviously, more studies need to be done, both to determine relief for the symtom and to see if skin sensitivity is a reliable factor in determining whether migraine disease is getting worse in an individual.

Off to take some Excedrin.