2024-07-21 04:12:16
“Migraine is a silent pain that few understand,” commented Valeria (26), an enthusiastic patient. This pain is usually perceived, normally by those who do not suffer from it, as a severe headache. However, it is more than a “minor” symptom that is resolved by taking aspirin.
For ten out of every hundred people who live in Argentina, migraine is a disease cook will affectwhich means “protector” and often drag on for years without receiving any adequate treatment.
On July 22, the world remembers Brain Day and – in this context – presents a study carried out a few years ago in Argentina that shows that 9.5% of the elderly population of our country suffer from migraine, a number of it goes up to 14% of women when they are pregnant.
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Headaches: Why do they affect women more than men?
“Patients come to the office all the time having spent years suffering without a proper diagnosis or receiving adequate treatment. I have even been advised by people who have had these attacks for more than twenty years,” he said PROFILE María Teresa Goicochea, head of the Work headache from the Department of Physiology of Fleni. He added: “In an international study published last year, we found that up to 40% of migraine patients spend more than five years making multiple medical visits without getting a diagnosis. And 35% consulted with at least four or more specialists before getting a migraine diagnosis. ”
On the other hand, epidemiologists estimate that almost half of patients with this disease (44%) suffer directly today, without recognizing it, and WHO considers it to be one of constant causes of illness in the world.
It is, moreover, a disease that is universal – and especially in Argentina – often subdiagnosticada and with undertreated.
More than a symptom
As Goicochea remembers together with those neurologist Yasmin Bravo, also a headache specialist at Fleni, “a migraine is not just a headache, it’s not even a symptom. It is a disease, and a classic headache can (and often is) accompanied by other manifestations such as hypersensitivity to light or noise; many nausea or vomiting, among others. It is such a constant pain pulse rate and it affects one of the corners of the head,” the scientists explained.
Also, if not treated with appropriate “rescue” and – finally – preventive medicine; It can range from moderate to severe pain. And this can occur in episodes of up to four hours but can extend up to three days in a row, which explains the high degree of weakness that can be generated in a person.
What are the treatments against migraine
According to Goicochea, many people have migraine They manage it with pain medications but – and here the alarm goes – “these must be indicated and monitored by a doctor and must be taken in the correct way to stop the attack. Because it often happens that these patients take large amounts of painkillers which, logically, end up making their pain worse.” In fact, this condition even has its own medical definition: “headache due to drug abuse.”
According to the experts, the attack of migraine is multifaceted: “It is a disease that has a genetic basis, but there are many external factors that can increase each episode: from being stressed to the extent of the person is sleeping or fasting long or continuously (exactly the type of food that is fashionable today).
Also, it is the subject of does not respect gender equality. For reasons that have to do with the differences in hormone concentrations that are typical of the menstrual cycle, migraines affect women up to three times more than men, because the change in estrogen tends to increase brain sensitivity and work- activation of neurotransmitters associated with migraine episodes. “In other words – in general – those who suffer the most and receive the highest impact on their productivity and daily activity are women between 15 and 50 years of age,” Goicochea summarized.
In any case, scientists know that it is a condition that also has some cycles and changes and molecular processes in the affected brain muscles that cause pain, if the drug has not finished releasing. “We know that they are brains that are highly responsive to external stimuli. “This causes increased vascular activity in the meninges and the result: symptoms and sensations that surround severe pain that can last for hours.”
To manage an incurable disease, experts prescribe various medications, including changes in lifestyle (physical exercise, diet, etc.). “With this, between 70 and 80% of patients manage to have a good control of the events,” said Goicochea. And he concluded: “They will not stop suffering from time to time, but they will be able to make their lives better.”
Because of the many pain killers
Statistics from neurological clinics suggest that almost 2% of the world’s population suffers from headache episodes for the man misuse of an analgesic drug, something they normally take to calm the pain!
Doctors define it as “an eczema that appears more than fifteen days a month, followed by excessive use, for more than three months, of one or more drugs that are often used for the treatment of chronic headache.
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“They tend to be patients who can take painkillers repetition, up to 10 or 15 times a month – and sometimes more -, seeks to have their symptoms somehow. They are very bad and they cannot do any work without taking some pain killers,” explained Goicochea.
These people combine different drugs to be able to go to work, take care of their family, go out with friends, or go to school or college. That is, to try to live your life every day. And taking the amount of medicine, ironically, ends up worsening their condition and causing new headaches and increased pain.
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