Migraines Portland, Maine

Migraine headaches are common among people living in Portland, Maine.  Migraine headaches are often debilitating, leading to missed days at work, loss of time with family and sometimes costly trips to the hospital.  Most migraine headaches are medicated with drugs like Maxalt and a host of others.  Migraine help in Portland, Maine is only a call away.

Many migraine headaches are triggered by smells, foods and other environmental factors.  Migraine headaches are characterized by the following symptoms:

• Pain on one side of your head
• Pain that has a pulsating, throbbing quality
• Sensitivity to light, sounds and sometimes smells
• Nausea and vomiting
• Blurred vision
• Diarrhea
• Lightheadedness, sometimes followed by fainting
• Visual disturbances such as seeing various shapes, bright spots or flashes of light
• Vision loss
• Pins and needles sensations in an arm or leg
• Speech or language problems

It is not uncommon for Tension Headaches to be mistaken for migraine headaches.  Tension headaches will lead into a migraine or if bad enough, cause some of the same symptoms – they overlap.  How does this happen?  Tension in the back of the neck will trigger a migraine headache, if you are unsuspecting of the tension, it will appear as though it is coming from a common migraine trigger, like a food.  In our office 8 out of ten migraine headache patients get relief because their migraine is triggered by a tension headache.   If you are asking yourself, “How did my doctor miss this?  That’s not possible!” ask yourself this question.  Did the doctor that diagnosed you with migraine headaches touch the back of your neck at the base of your skull to see if pressure caused a radiating pain to climb up over your head and into your forehead?  If not, they may have missed an important clue to your diagnosis and healing process. To find out if your migraine is caused by tension headaches, call Dr. Jacobs at (207) 774-6251. Treating the tension headache component of your migraine will effectively break the cycle of migraine headaches.