I am happy to state that I am not a migraine victim; my wife is currently fighting one off, as is, I’m sure, my sister, my brother-in-law, possibly my nephew, and indeed half of my friends. NewScientist (7 March 2015) reports in “Not just a headache: How migraine changes your brain” (paywall) by Helen Phillips that at least migraines do not lead to mental declines:
To find out what’s really going on, these changes needed to be monitored. Do regular migraines cause more areas of stroke-like damage? And to what effect? Kruit and his team rescanned most of their volunteers nine years later. Interestingly they found the number of spots had slightly increased over time in women with migraine, but not in men, but they didn’t correlate with migraine frequency, severity, or treatment. Neither did the spots seem to have any bearing on cognitive functions like memory or attention. Another long-term study in France found no link between migraines and cognitive decline, all the way to age 80.
And relief may be on the way:
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and other techniques that deliver small electrical currents through electrodes on the forehead are already proving effective in some cases of migraine, as well as for chronic pain conditions and depression
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These treatments seem to work by steadily altering and normalising oversensitive brain circuits, though at present it’s not clear how. One big advantage is that they are well tolerated compared with other therapies, including drugs and botox – which is approved for migraine treatment by the US Food and Drug Administration.
For all of us, this is hopeful news. I do recall as a teenager occasionally having horrendous headaches; but, as I recall, eating a meal usually cleared them up, and I called hunger headaches. I wonder if they were just a form of migraine. And one more little tidbit:
Work with children is adding weight to the idea that migraine is a progressive brain disease, which may appear in different ways at different stages of life, beginning with some kind of genetic susceptibility. One startling suggestion is that infant colic, the uncontrolled crying and fussiness often blamed on sensitive stomachs or reflux, may be an early form of migraine.
There’s a family story about Dad sitting up with me one night, out on the porch, watching thunderstorms roll in over Puget Sound while I screamed and fussed and whatever with the colic.
