What are the Symptoms of Migraine?
Since headache is the most common symptom of migraine, it is usually mistaken as some sort of headache although in reality it is a condition affecting your whole body. Autonomic nervous system is primarily responsible for controlling the vascular system and intestines. If one or both of these functions get hindered, patients suffer from the most common symptoms of migraine: headache and nausea. Additionally, systemic and neurologic findings may also be listed as migraine symptoms.
Migraine pain is severe enough to hold the patient back from daily life. It may be described as a throbbing, severe pain on one side of the head. It also may affect the forehead, nape and in some cases the whole head. Attacks begin with a mild pain and continues increasingly up to 8-12 hours. Sometimes it may even last for 3 days.
Systemic symptoms of migraine include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, sweating, fatigue, unstable blood pressure and pulse. 20% of migraineurs suffer from neurological problems. Visual complaints like flashes and dots before the eyes, and even half blindness, or other problems like numbness, weakness, temporary paralysis, speech disorders and dizziness may occur.
If there are no headaches but the visual complaints, that condition is called “silent migraine”. Silent migraine attacks may cause the patient serious problems even without the headache.