Do you suffer from Physical or Emotional Migraine Causes, or both?
If you are one of the thousands of Australians who suffer from Migraine, you will know how debilitating it can be. There are many options available to treat Migraine, but it is beneficial to learn ways to prevent them as well.
While it is important to know how to treat migraine, in the long term by keeping a migraine diary, this may give you an insight as to which migraine causes or triggers may affect you personally. This may enable you to prevent them occurring in the future.
There are many contributing factors which may trigger the onset of a migraine. If you are a sufferer of migraines, learning to recognise the signs before they advance to a migraine are key to successfully managing occurrences.
Emotional migraine causes may include:
- Being in a constant state of stress and anxiety
- Feeling depressed
- excitement
- experiencing sudden shock.
More obvious physical migraine causes can include:
- poor posture, especially forward head posture (link to Posture article)
- fatigue and lack of quality sleep
- neck tension
- shoulder tension
- physical overexertion
- eye strain or exposure to flashing lights
- jet lag
- low blood sugar
- hormonal fluctuations, noticeably in women
- dehydration
Migraine Contributing Foods
An example is provided below of 10 of the more commonly known foods which may also contribute to migraine.
- Heavily processed meats such as sausages, pepperoni, ham hotdogs
- Cheese
- Alcohol
- Aspartame (common in diet drinks claiming sugar free)
- Breads or cakes that contain brewers yeast
- Excess consumption of coffee or caffeine laden drinks
- Chocolate and cocoa
- MSG or monosodium glutamate (common additive in Asian cuisine)
- Peanut butter and other nuts
- Salt (most packaged foods are known to contain high amounts of sodium)
Higher Risk Factors
You may be more at risk of suffering from migraines if:
- there is a family history: If one parent gets Migraines, there is a 50% more chance, if both parents suffer, the risk increases to 75% likelihood
- If you’re a Female: More women suffer than men (hormone related)
- Your age: Its common for adolescents to have their first migraine, and then usually before the age of 40.
Know How to Treat Migraine
Your trusted GP will be able to investigate, diagnose and provide ways on how to treat migraine lessening the frequency, causes and severity. Learning to recognise the signs and acting early can also shorten the duration of the migraine.
Many sufferers have a pre migraine warning of aura in their field of vision. This is actually known as migraine with aura. Flashes of light, zig zagging across, blurred vision are all symptoms that can occur very suddenly. As soon as the disturbances occur it is important to lie down with eyes closed, taking appropriate medication prescribed by your doctor or chemist.
So How Can your Chiropractor Help with a Migraine
Migraine causes vary from hereditary to emotional and physical causes.
Your Chiropractor is not going to stop you eating the wrong foods although they will guide you into the correct lifestyle changes.
Most importantly a Chiropractor will make sure your body and nerves are functioning the correct way to help combat Migraine causes and have you working at optimal health.
Check out our New Patient Assessment to make sure you have done everything possible to stop your Migraines.
