Blacks and Migraines: How Many is Too Many?

A migraine is a neurological disorder that causes constant intense headaches. Certain people even experience hints of nausea, weakness, as well as sensitivity to any sounds and light. 

How severe or frequent the migraines take place differs for everyone and can get worse as time progresses if nothing is done.

Today BlackDoctor.Org is here to answer your question: how many migraines is too many, and when should you seek help? 

Episodic and Chronic Migraines

When it comes to migraines, they primarily consist of two categories of migraine: episodic and chronic. 

You can differentiate them through the frequency and intensity of when they arise:

• Episodic migraines take place between one to 14 times every month.
• Chronic migraines occur 15 or more days a month throughout a cycle of three months.

Generally speaking, a chronic migraine is far worse and tougher to treat.

Episodic migraine affects more people, but it’s further broken down into two kinds. If you get hit with migraines under 10 times each month, you could have what’s referred to as low-frequency episodic migraine (LFEM). 

This sort of episodic migraine impacts a greater percentage of people. If you get migraine attacks within the range of 10 to 14 times a month, your doctor may say that it’s a high-frequency episodic migraine (HFEM).

RELATED: What Can Blacks Do To Get An Accurate Migraine Diagnosis?

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Knowing the Risk Factors

It’s normal to experience a migraine since it affects 12 percent of Americans. But a migraine is not to the same degree as your average bad headache. The immense throbbing pain can get in the way of everyday life. The World Health Organization has claimed it as the sixth most disabling condition around the globe.

Various risk factors raise your chances of getting frequent migraines. Women are three times more prone to face them than men. It’s also more of a normal occurrence among women between the ages of 15 and 55. Particular hormonal shifts may trigger migraines.

Other factors include:

• Family history of migraine — about 80 percent of people with migraine are closely related to someone with it
• Smoking
• High amounts of stress 

Certain medical conditions can significantly skyrocket how frequent and intense your migraine attacks are. They include:

• Head or neck injury
• Some pain disorders
• Obesity
• Asthma
• Snoring

Overdoing it with medication, such as migraine-treatment drugs, you might be required or suggested to take, can heighten your risk of HFEM or chronic migraine. 

Your best bet would be to stay on top of all the prescription and over-the-counter medications you take. If you begin to take into account an unhealthy boost in migraine frequency, keep your doctor in the loop. They may recommend an alternative medicine to subsidize any chance of migraine attacks getting progressively worse.

Identifying The Source of Recurring Episodic Migraines

What is the main blame for a migraine on a general scale is not as simple as it seems, and doctors can’t even entirely wrap their heads around it. Headaches often happen when specific nerves in your blood vessels deliver pain signals to your brain. This leads to inflammatory substances going into your nerves and blood vessels, which as a result provokes a migraine attack. It’s not clear what makes your nerves do that.

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In the circumstance of HFEM, various factors can trigger a spike in the frequency and severity of your migraine attacks.

These include:

• Anxiety
• Drastic hormonal transitions in women
• Bright or flashing lights
• Loud noises
• Potent odors 
• Medications
• Too much or insufficient sleep
• Sudden shifts in weather or environment
• Too much physical activity or fitness
• Tobacco
• Caffeine or caffeine withdrawal
• Skipping meals
• Medicine overuse
• Food allergies

RELATED: Migraines: Why Do They Start & How to End Them

Getting Diagnosed for High-Frequency Episodic Migraine As A Black Individual

Only 47 percent of Black patients with headaches get their official headache diagnosis versus 70 percent of Caucasians. Latinos with headaches have 50 percent less of a likelihood of getting a migraine diagnosis than white patients. This is because patients lacking a proper migraine diagnosis are unable to get the migraine-specific therapy they need.

Just 14 percent of Black headache patients get prescribed acute migraine medications, as opposed to 37 percent of white headache patients. 

The most important thing you can do is empower yourself with information and be your own healthcare advocate. 

If you experience a migraine, determining which type can help you narrow down what your treatment plan looks like. To distinguish whether it’s LFEM or HFEM, your doctor may ask you:

• How many migraines do you get per month?
• How intense and recurring are they?
• If you have your menstrual cycle, did you get yours around the time of the migraines?
• Describe the form and region of the headache — is it a pounding, pulsing, or throbbing pain?
• How long does it last?
• Are there specific hobbies, foods, stressors, or scenarios that trigger your migraines?
• Do you take medicine for pain relief? Do they function?
• How often do you ingest medicine?
• Describe how you felt before, during, and following the migraine.

BlackDoctor.Org highly recommends investing in a migraine journal to jot down every detail of the times, dates, and symptoms before, during, and after an attack to get closer to a more accurate diagnosis.