Within 45 minutes, she was back to normal. They let you resume your daily activities. With offices in Sellersville and Lansdale, the busy neurologist with Penn Neurologic Associates and mother of three sons doesn t want to go to bed when a migraine strikes. In the past, that definitely was an option for many migraine sufferers. Once limited to injections, some of the newer drugs are available in pill form, and now there s even a nasal spray that has appeared on the medical front.
Ongoing research has scientists trying to identify a gene causing migraines.
Because an estimated one out of five Americans suffers from them some severe enough to land them in a hospital emergency room the new drugs have provided some modern answers to an ancient problem. Unfortunately, symptoms vary so much from one person to the next that migraines still are a poorly understood disorder. Even the medical community is at odds over what causes a migraine. The vascular theory points to a widening and narrowing of blood vessels in the scalp and brain as the culprit. Although most researchers believe blood vessels do play a significant role during a migraine attack, they also believe the problem is more complex than that.