Migraine Symptoms & Treatment

Migraine, headache, mixed headache, and neck pain are words that are often inappropriately interchanged. It is commonly believed that if a headache is associated with nausea or vomiting, or is severe enough to interfere with activities of daily living, then it must be a vascular migraine.

While vascular migraine can certainly be the source of the above symptoms, there are known non-vascular migraines that can result in the same migraine symptoms. These include sinus, tension, metabolic, stress, weather-related vasomotor, and hormonal cycle-induced headache. In fact, most migraines result from a combination of these causes and are therefore are more properly referred to as mixed headaches. And the ocular migraine is a rare type of migraine marked by temporary vision loss.

To confuse the situation further, sometimes headache does not come from the head at all. Symptoms that originate in the neck may radiate into the head, and crescendo to such severity that they could easily be labeled as migraine. Arthritic conditions, postural abnormalities, temporal mandibular joint (TMJ) syndrome, and facial dystrophies are additional examples of disorders that can mimic classic migraine.

At Piedmont Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, P.A. we recognize that the diagnosis of migraine can be difficult. We encourage your involvement in the decision making process, and if necessary, will look beyond traditional methods in order to diagnosis or treat your condition. We do not perform surgery. We do perform diagnostic studies that evaluate all the causes that can contribute to your pain.

While medications by mouth are utilized, the use of other therapies is also emphasized. These include:

• Physical agents (various forms of heat, cold and electricity)
• Mechanical agents
• Anesthetic agents and blocks
• Injection therapy
• Nutritional correction
• Immune system enhancement
• Patient education
• Hormonal and metabolic correction
• Botulinum administration

The underlying principle is to reduce total load — the total number of things that contribute to migraine. By curing each problem, one at a time, the vast majority of migraine sufferers have a dramatic reduction or elimination of their headaches.