Being struck with a migraine attack can put you out of commission for hours and even days. There’s no question that living with this condition significantly alters your quality of life — for the worse.
There are many different types of migraine, and headache severity, symptoms, and frequency vary greatly, but all pose major challenges.
The involved and caring provider team at Houston Neurological Institute is dedicated to finding out all they can about your particular migraine experience — your migraine history, specific symptoms, how many times a month you’re faced with migraine, and more.
We offer innovative migraine treatments and review ongoing research about new treatments on the horizon, so you’re able to access cutting-edge care.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), migraine is a top-10 most debilitating condition across the globe, and in the United States, more than 37 million men, women, and children live with migraine currently.
There are many types of migraine, including:
This type of migraine occurs when you experience 15 or more days of head pain per month for more than three months. Pain levels and other symptoms may vary, but the attacks are commonplace.
Symptoms of migraine with aura include visual changes, like seeing patterns, sparks, or dark lines before or during an attack. You might also notice numbness or tingling on one side of your body or face and even speech problems. This phase can last up to an hour, and you may or may not experience headache along with it.
Migraine without aura involves throbbing head pain that can be intense, typically on one side of your head. Physical activity can exacerbate the pain and other serious symptoms include nausea or vomiting; and light, sound, and odor sensitivity. However, you don’t experience visual disturbances.
This mystifying type of migraine doesn’t include head pain, but you can experience aura or other migraine signs. Because of the lack of head pain, these migraine types are frequently mistaken for a stroke.
This type of migraine can also be misdiagnosed as a stroke, since head pain may not materialize, and weakness on one side of the body is a major symptom. Aura symptoms like pins and needles sensations and visual changes occur, too. Fortunately, hemiplegic migraine is rare.
This type of severe migraine attack comes in clusters, or batches that occur anywhere between 1-8 times per day. Each can last 15 to a seemingly endless 180 minutes. These tortuous headaches cause a burning sensation in your eye area, temples, and sometimes the back of your head. The eyelids can also swell, droop, redden, and tear.
This type of migraine’s name says it all. Its pain is so sudden and violent that many describe it as feeling like they’re being attacked with an ice pick. Though they’re short and last from 5-30 seconds, ice pick headaches are agonizing and happen mostly around one eye or the temples. They can co-occur with other migraine types, like cluster headaches.
The complexity of migraine is one thing that makes treating patients so challenging, as does the fact that certain types can be confused with stroke. This fact makes it even more essential for your Houston Neurological Institute provider to customize your treatment plan so it can be effective and successful.
At Houston Neurological Institute, we attack migraine with a diverse treatment arsenal that includes medications, BotoxⓇ or occipital nerve injections, and lifestyle practice adjustments.
One treatment we’re excited about is dihydroergotamine (DHE) infusions, because they offer relief from the excruciating pain of an acute attack. This is meaningful for patients because of the frightening “out of the blue” nature of some types of migraine that feature a level of pain that lays you flat. These include cluster headaches and migraine with or without aura.
We administer DHE treatment to patients at our Pasadena office’s infusion center, which is designed for your comfort and allows you either quiet and privacy or the opportunity to interact with other patients experiencing similar challenges.
The advantage to an IV infusion is that the medication can be precisely delivered directly into your bloodstream through the IV line in your arm, so it can address the pain as quickly as possible. We closely monitor you as you receive your treatment.
If the challenges of migraine symptoms are disrupting your life, we’re here to help. Contact our Pearland or Pasadena office to schedule an appointment, or book one online.
