NEUROLOGICAL CONDITIONS
Headaches (e.g. Migraine, Cluster, Tension)
Migraine
Migraine is characterised by periodic headaches, typically unilateral, often associated with visual disturbance and vomiting.
Cluster Headache
Usually occurs in young adult males.
Cluster headache is associated with trigemino-vascular activation and neuroendocrine and vegetative disturbances. Involvement of hypothalamus may explain the cyclic aspects of cluster headache.
Familial in about 10% of cases.
Tension
A tension-type headache causes mild to moderate pain that's often described as feeling like a tight band around the head. A tension-type headache is the most common type of headache, yet its causes aren't well understood.
Treatments are available. Managing a tension-type headache is often a balance between practicing healthy habits, finding effective nonmedicine treatments and using medicines appropriately.
Causes
Migraine
"Anything under the sun including the sun" can precipitate an attack, but each person has his own triggering factors.
Commonly, these are stress, exposure to bright light, loud noises, smoke or strong scents, menstruation, lack or excess of sleep, cheese, caffeine, alcohol, chocolate, citrus fruit, food additives such as monosodium glutamate, vasodilators, exercise and contraceptive pills.
Familial tendency is usual.
Symptoms
Migraine
Attacks are episodic and start at puberty and continue till late middle life with variable degree of spontaneous remissions. Frequency, duration and severity of attacks vary in the same individual.
Headache is typically hemicranial, throbbing in character, and associated with nausea and vomiting.
In classical migraine, headache is preceded by an aura that is a focal neurologic disturbance manifesting as visual aura (flashing lights or scintillating spots that may cross visual field over minutes, scotoma), sensory aura or language aura.
Both sensory and visual auras have a slow migratory or spreading quality in which symptoms slowly spread across the affected body part or the visual field, followed by a gradual return to normal function in the areas first affected after 20 to 60 minutes. In an ischaemic event, neurologic deficits tend to appear somewhat suddenly and tend to be equally distributed within the relevant vascular territory.
In migraine aura, different neurologic symptoms tend to occur sequentially (e.g. visual aura followed by sensory aura). In contrast, simultaneous manifestation of multiple types of neurologic symptoms is quite common in cerebral ischaemia.
In migraine aura, positive features are followed by negative symptoms instead of occuring simultaneously.
Allodynia (production of pain from normally non-painful stimuli) is an extremely common phenomenon in migraine, occuring in about two-thirds of patients.
Sever attacks are associated with photophobia and prostration. The attack spontaneously terminates after few hours or sleep.
Cluster Headache
Characterised by recurrent, short-lasting attacks (15 to 180 minutes) of excruciating unilateral periorbital pain.
Often accompanied by ipsilateral autonomic signs (lacrimation, nasal congestion, ptosis, miosis, lid odema and redness of the eye).
Circadian periodicity with attacks being clustered in bouts that can occur during specific months of the year.
Alcohol, strong odours and napping may trigger headache.
Attacks may happen at precise hours, especially during the night.
Tension
Symptoms of a tension-type headache. include:
Dull, aching head pain.
Feeling of tightness or pressure across the forehead or on the sides and back of the head.
Tenderness in the scalp, neck and shoulder muscles.
Tension-type headaches are divided into two main categories — episodic and chronic.
Episodic tension-type headaches
Episodic tension-type headaches can last from 30 minutes to a week. Frequent episodic tension-type headaches occur less than 15 days a month for at least three months. This type of headache can become chronic.
Chronic tension-type headaches
This type of tension-type headache lasts hours and may be constant. Chronic tension-type headache occurs 15 or more days a month of at least three months.
Treatments
Medical management helps in acute as well as chronic types of headaches. Homeopathy helps by acting on mind and body both and reduces the mental stress and other triggering factors which reduces these headaches. It helps in increasing the immunity of patients. No side effects of homeopathy even if taken for long period of time. Cures diseases from within and permanently.
Few homeopathy medicines which helps in such cases are glononium, nux vomica, spigelia etc
