migraines symptoms

Symptoms of Migraines

Migraines are usually described as severe, disabling, reoccurring headache usually affecting only one side of the head, and often accompanied by nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light, and visual disturbances.

If you don’t feel like that sounds exactly like what you are experiencing, it is hard to know how to proceed. You may even be questioning whether or not you are experiencing headaches or migraines. Let’s go beyond “common knowledge” and talk about the real and varied symptoms of migraine:

Your head can feel:

Painful, under pressure, swollen, numb, or heavy.
Like it’s buzzing, vibrating, pulsating, trickling, crawling, drilling, rushing
As though an ice pick, or hot poker is being forced through your eye.

The level of pain can be:

Mild – Uncomfortable but ignorable.
Moderate – Uncomfortable enough to make regular tasks harder to do.
Severe – Too painful to go about daily tasks.

Feelings of pain or other discomfort can come on:

Gradually – Slowly over a matter of days.
Extremely rapidly – Seemingly instantly or within minutes.

The pain or other symptoms may be located:

Anywhere in your head, face, or neck.
In a very specific spot like your eye, side of the head, sinus, ear channel, jaw, teeth or another single location.
All around the head, face, or neck.

The pain can last anywhere from seconds to years.

Episodes can be:

Infrequent – Occurs less than once per month.
Frequent – Occurs anywhere from twice per month to 14 times per month.
Chronic – Occurs more than 15 days per month.

You may experience odd symptoms that disappear when your headache starts:

Visual disturbances – seeing twinkling lights, zigzags, and double vision. Or you may lose sight including blurred vision, black spots, or blindness.
Auditory disturbances – difficulty hearing, echoes, and hearing things that are not there.

While experiencing the headache you may also experience:

Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and constipation.
Fever, sweating, dizziness, or chills.
Sensitive, tender, bruised, or burning sensations anywhere on your face or scalp.
Visibly swollen veins, bloodshot eyes, drooping eyelids, tears, flushed skin, or nosebleeds.
Frightening symptoms like numbness, paralysis, or seizures.

You may experience the following all the time, even when you don’t have a headache:

Neck and shoulder stiffness, spasms, pain or cramps.
Nasal pain, congestion or drip.

Does any of the above sound like what you are experiencing? If so make a note next to the appropriate sections. Also, do not miss the last bullet point – chronic daily symptoms like a stiff and painful neck, sinus congestion and more can all be attributed to the root cause of headache and migraine conditions. This means if you treat your headache and migraine, you may also resolve other chronic problems you assumed were unrelated.

Why are the symptoms of migraine so varied? Simply stated, migraine can be best defined as a neurological condition of which headache is just one of many symptoms. No two people will experience migraines the same way. Some people will experience the full range of symptoms whereas others only one or two. Some people will even have symptoms of migraine without the sensation of headache.

For more information on migraines, be sure to sign up for our newsletter!