Triggers, treatments for the worst headaches

Graham Danyleyko, an associate professor at Chapman's Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences, explained the triggers of migraine headaches and how they differ from the more common varieties. COURTESY OF CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY

Possible triggers for migraine headaches

Chocolate, MSG, red wine, aged cheese, smoked fish, certain beans, avocados, bananas, citrus fruits, hot dogs, salami, cured meats, bacon, nuts, fermented food, caffeine withdrawals, menstrual changes, birth control pills, alcohol, alcohol withdrawal, noises, bright lights, odors, smoke, stress, anxiety and many others.


Something’s not right.

You’re seeing stars, having trouble speaking, maybe even smelling something unusual. What you’re experiencing is an “aura” — a perceptual disturbance that lets you know something’s amiss in your body. Suddenly, you realize what’s coming: a migraine. That relentless throbbing pain — the bane of anybody who’s ever experienced it. Why is this happening? What can you do?

Professor Graham Danyleyko of Chapman’s Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences teaches Physician Assistant Studies and has more than 30 years of experience in health care. For physicians like Danyleyko, headaches are one of the most common issues for patients.

Danyleyko explained what makes migraines different from common headaches, what causes them, and how to nurse them should you get one.

The most common headache is a tension headache, which typically feels as if you have a tight band around your head.

These headaches can last for minutes or hours but almost never reach the point of being debilitating.

By contrast, migraines are more extreme in every regard.

Migraines are painful — sometimes severely so — and marked by a pulsing, throbbing feeling in one’s head. This incessant pulsing can last hours or days before it goes away and can be accompanied by other symptoms.

Both headaches have a similar origin: a message sent within the brain. The difference lies in what triggers that message and where it goes.

“When we get headaches, there’s an inflammatory process that’s involved with it – some form of stimulation that causes a message to be sent to your brain. There are different receptors that respond to that,” Danyleyko said.

For tension headaches, the trigger is most often stress, noise or sensitivity to light. When the brain fires off a message in response to a tension headache’s trigger stimulus, the message goes to receptors in one’s musculature – hence the “band-like” feeling that one’s head is being squeezed.

With migraines, possible triggers are nearly endless. The stimulus can come from an array of foods, noise, stress, light, birth control pills, caffeine withdrawals or exposure to light, smoke or certain odors. The message fired off by the brain for migraines, Danyleyko said, ends up being received by blood vessels and the meningeal membranes, which contain spinal fluid and serve as a cushion for the brain. This results in a significantly more painful reaction that is sometimes joined by nausea, vomiting, blurred vision and fainting.

Danyleyko said that around 18 percent of women and 7 percent of men will have migraines. Some people get migraines fairly often, while others may never experience one. This can be attributed to a demonstrable genetic component – if a mother has migraines, her children are more likely to have them.

Danyleyko said the data has a tendency to skew this way because women are more than twice as likely to have migraines than men.

Depending on your triggers, avoiding migraines might not be possible. If you do find yourself with a migraine, there are a few things you can do to mitigate the pain.

Danyleyko says the best thing for a migraine is sitting in a quiet, darkened room and getting plenty of rest. Of course, staying in the dark all day isn’t an option for those with work or school, but there are other ways to stave off the pain.

A full dose of typical headache medicine will help, as will staying hydrated throughout the day. Be aware that migraines can come with all manner of symptoms to the point that they might initially be confused with a brain tumor. These should fade as the headache does, Danyleyko said.

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