What is the course of a migraine attack?
What is the course of a migraine attack?
What is the course of a migraine attack?
Without medication…
A severe headache develops quickly during a migraine attack.
It usually lasts for a few hours, then fades quickly.
The red line in the figure shows you how the headache of a migraine attack worsens when no medication is taken.
During a migraine attack, it makes sense to take the right pain medication early!
A severe headache develops quickly during a migraine attack.
It usually lasts for a few hours, then fades quickly.
The red line in the figure shows you how the headache of a migraine attack worsens when no medication is taken.
During a migraine attack, it makes sense to take the right pain medication early!
With medication…
You can see how the intensity of a migraine attack can be changed using pain medication.
It is important that the right pain medication is taken as early as possible to prevent the pain curve (the red line) from becoming too much.
You can see how the intensitiy of a migraine attack can be changed using a pain medication.
It is important that the right pain medication is taken as early as possible to keep the pain curve (the red line) from becoming too much.
If the pain medication is taken too late, it will only be able to influence the pain intensity to a certain extent, and the duration of the migraine attack may not be noticeably reduced. It won’t make a difference whether you take the medication a little too late or much too late during the attack.
It is IMPORTANT to note that taking more pain medication later won’t help either!
While one person’s migraine attacks may be similar each time, they can be very different from person to person.
In addition to the headache phase, a migraine consists of other phases.
If you want to learn more about migraine phases, you can click through each phase below.
Migraine phases
All you need to know at one glance. Click your way through.
- Prephase
- Aura
- Headache phase
- Recovery phase
Prephase
More than half of all children and adolescents who experience migraines have symptoms that signal a migraine attack.
This is because a migraine attack begins before you get a headache.
The changes that appear before a headache are called “prodromal symptoms”. We’ll just call them “precursors” here.
Precursors vary from person to person. Often people have two or even more.
Typical precursors
- Pale face and/ or dark circles under the eyes
- Intense fatigue
- Increased irritability/ sensitivity
- Feeling anxious or stressed
- Sensitivity to noise
- Yawning
- Sensitivity to light
- Nausea
If you’ve identified the percursors of your migraine, you can often react better when the headache starts. That’s why doing the detective work is worth it.
Helpful Tip:
Also ask the people closest to you if they notice anything about you before the attack starts. Sometimes you won’t even notice the first signs yourself.
The best way to get to know your headaches is to use a diary. You can see what a headache diary looks like here…
AURA
For one in six children and teenagers with migraines, an “aura” develops before or during the headache phase of a migraine.
Typical aura symptoms
The most common aura symptom is impaired vision.
- Flickering (bright, flickering or spinning light) in your field of vision
- Seeing jagged lines
- “Hazy” or distorted vision
- Visual field loss (i.e., you only see half of what’s in front of your face)
- Tingling / numbness in the hand
- Rarely: Restricted movement in arms or legs
- Very rare: Things are seen differently, something is smelled or felt that is not there, speech problems
It is typical for the aura to only occur on one side. E.g., only one eye sees strangely, only one hand tingles.
The aura can last from only a few minutes up to an hour. Afterwards, the aura symptoms disappear completely. Migraine headaches often become worse after the aura and last longer than the aura.
The good thing about an aura is that you can quickly recognize that a migraine attack is approaching. Often, the bounce test is then no longer necessary.
But it’s also important to know that if you have a migraine with an aura, the aura won’t necessarily occur with every migraine attack.
All in all: Even if they sound frightening at first, you don’t have to be afraid of auras! They are quite harmless.
You can learn even more about auras in the expert knowledge section.
Expert knowledge
Do you know the story of Alice in Wonderland?
She experienced many funny and strange things. Sometimes an aura can be similar, so one type of aura was named after this story.
“Alice in Wonderland Syndrome” is the name given to an aura in which you see things around you bigger, smaller, or otherwise different (for example, things seem to move more quickly than normal). These auras are most often described by children and adolescents and less often by adults.
Headache phase
This is the phase when the migraine headache begins.
It is explained in more detail here:
What does a migraine feel like?
At a glance
- Strong, sudden headache that usually only lasts for a few hours
- Pain is described as “pulsating”, but may also feel more pressing or piercing
- While in adults migraine headaches often occur on only one side of the head, in children and teenagers they may also be felt on both sides of the head or in the middle of the forehead
Other symptoms
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Sensitivity to light and sound
Recovery phase
When the headache phase is over, you often feel weird and weak for a while.
If you go to sleep because of the pain, you may not even notice this phase.
Now you already know a lot about migraines. So let’s figure out what you can do during an attack:
How do you treat a migraine?
Continue here. Helpful tips for dealing with a migraine attack.
How do migraines develop?
Click here to go back to the information about how a migraine attack develops.