Although tension headaches are by far the most common, chronic migraines are much more likely to send a desperate individual to the doctor seeking relief. I use the term victim when I refer to chronic headache sufferers, because it s a very wicked syndrome, says Burton M. Altura, M.D., professor of physiology and medicine at the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn. Besides the agonizing pain, these folks often have tremendous sensitivity to light and noise. Just snapping your fingers or clapping around them can be excruciating. But what migraines lack in gender equality they make up for in severity.
Some migraines are so extreme that they cause limb numbness, hallu cinations, nausea and vomiting.
The good news is that medical research has come up with several vitamin and mineral therapies that might prove helpful for people who have been unable to find relief elsewhere. Nine hundred bowls of cornflakes. These might prevent a migraine if they weren t guaranteed to give you a stomachache first. Fortunately for the 49 people in a Belgian headache study, they were able to take supplements to get the necessary 400-milligram daily dose. By the end of the study, migraine severity decreased by nearly 70 percent in both groups compared with what it had been at the study s start.