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Making Headway on Migraines

If you’ve never had a migraine headache, you just can’t imagine what it’s like, says Mel Pokorny, who’s suffered from migraines for more than 30 years. “It’s indescribable to most people,” she says. “You can hear the blood rushing through your head. You start seeing spots in your vision and within a few minutes you’re (one phrase). ”

Still, the malady isn’t always . “You can’t see a headache, and that makes it harder for people to understand how debilitating a migraine can be,” says Suzanne Simons, executive director of the National Headache Foundation. “For many years, physicians as well as lay people thought people with migraines were just complainers, or didn’t handle stress well, or just wanted to get out of doing something.”

These days, people know better—but not enough of them. According to neurologist Dr. Stephen Herzog, “There’s probably no disorder that’s as misunderstood and and mistreated as migraine.”

Migraine facts

Migraine, says Herzog, is a “chemical disorder of the brain, like diabetes is a chemical disorder of the pancreas. Ninety percent of the time it’s hereditary.”

The pain is caused when blood vessels become dilated and , which can last a few hours or a few days. Depending on the severity, the pain can be accompanied by nausea and vision problems, plus extreme sensitivity to light and sound. That can happen once a week or once a year.

Though migraine is a chronic condition, headaches are often caused by triggers that vary from person to person. They can range from certain foods to stress, menstrual cycles to changes in the weather

The bad news, Herzog says, is that the condition has no cure. The better news is that there has been an “explosion of science to understand migraines and new medications to target them.”

Vocabulary Focus

indescribable (adj) ---impossible to describe, usually because of being extremely good or bad

debilitating (adj) ---making someone physically weak

hereditary (adj) ----relating to disease or quality passed to a child from its parents before birth

dilate (v) ---to cause a part of the body to become wider or further open

comprehensive (adj) ---complete and including everything that is necessary

Specialized terms