How do you know when a headache is a migraine?

[Dontknowwhattodo223]

I've had the worst headache I've ever had today. It's lasted hours, paracetamol and ibuprofen have done nothing. It's like a really intense painful throbbing all over my head but mainly on the right side into my neck. I felt nauseous and sweaty and went pale.

Usually a pain in the head and eye like a stabbing pain with blurred vision, stiff neck and can't lift my head, light sensitive and I get the nausea too. I always have migraine tablets wherever I go. A few times I've been woken early hours of the morning with it and I know when this happens I'm doomed for the day. One wiped me out a full weekend. Being a single mum and having that was not fun lol! My daughters 11 so she was quite self sufficient and we lay on the sofa or bed all weekend. Then it's like the tiredness of recovering from it too it's draining xxx

There needn’t be a headache at all. I usually don’t have any with mine but if I do it’s inside my teeth. It’s the aphasia that’s debilitating. I know it’s a migraine because of the aura and because the aphasia stops when taking a triptan.

It's the blurry vision that marks it for me. I'm sometimes sick as well, but that always comes later.

Visual aura. Followed by nausea (with or without vomiting.) Intense, overwhelming headache where I can't settle and need to pace. Eventually I have to lie down and after a couple of hours I fall asleep. I wake up a few hours later feeling weirdly euphoric.

I have always been a headachey person in general. Tension headaches. Ice pick headaches. Headaches from clenching my jaw. But they are relatively rare now that I'm in menopause.

Nausea, certain smells make me feel sick, eye pain, light sensitivity and I lose the ability to string a sentence together - random words will just be gone! I also feel like I'm out of time with the world, like it's spinning.

I've also had stress headaches, which are absolutely awful and debilitating but minus the smell or light sensitivity, the loss of words or the giddy, out sync feeling. I get brain fog with them but not to the same extent.

When I have a migraine, I can only sleep. With a stress headache I can often carry on with a lot of strong painkillers.

Really interesting point about constipation - I always assumed that was because I take codeine with ibuprofen for a migraine.

When the vomiting starts for me.

When I get a blind spot in my vision and then zig zag lines moving up my eyesight - this lasts about half an hour … sometimes I get circular whirls instead of zigzags … then that subsides and I get the headache on the opposite side . Feel/am sick .
The next day I feel drained - getting worse as I’m getting older (40s)

I haven't read the whole thread but I felt like this back in June. It came on suddenly. I'd never had a migraine so I wasn't sure. It turned out to be viral meningitis and I was very poorly. They asked me multiple times if I'd describe it as the world headache ever (which I did before they'd even asked) as it's often what people say when they have it.
Get seen by someone OP.

Intense head ache, blurry vision with zig zags, floaters and blind spots, pins and needles/numbness in hands and arms, inability to read, write, type or get my words to come out correctly when speaking, forgetting the word for things, feeling disjointed, nausea and vomiting. I have to go to bed in the dark, throw up and then sleep it off. I'm then exhausted for the next 24 hours.

I get nerve pain on one side of my face, sometimes the nerve pain starts on my scalp first then moves to my face and then I get the pain and then nausea, it can for days

For me dehydration causes headaches but migraines have nothing to do with hydration. They usually appear with an aura and my vision starts going blury in focal points and I start feeling nauseous. It’s like a thunderstorm where it starts off gradually in the distance and starts to creep in so I take paracetamol/ibuprofen as soon as possible. I usually go and lay down in a dark room as I can’t abide the lights.

I asked a neurologist this exact question when I was referred for migraines. He said that there isn't a formal medical definition (as not everyone gets vision issues and nausea) so he classes a migraine as a headache that's so bad you can't function normally

This for me too and later on. The bizarre lights flashing in my head.

For me a regular headache is just a pain in the head and painkillers ease it. A migraine has other symptoms like nausea, vomiting, slurred speech, inability to think or even speak sometimes, I can’t do even the most basic tasks and have to lie down. Painkillers don’t do much either I always feel extremely tired for a day or so afterwards too.

I can cope with a headache. A migraine literally makes me want to die. The head part is almost the easiest bit...it's the light sensitivity, the nausea, the feeling like I've had a stroke that's the worst.

Ice cold coke, mars bar and a pitch black room is my solution. Although I did recently discover snelling salts and that can bring some relief albeit short lived

I knew it was a migraine when the neurologist diagnosed it. Not all migraines are identical. Really bad headaches can be caused by many things other than a migraine. There are even migraines that are painless!

I would see your GP and have it investigated if you are getting bad headaches repeatedly and this is a new development.

For me, they always come on overnight so I'll wake up around 5am with a throbbing headache (though sometimes the headaches can be mild). I always have an aversion to light and sound so tend to lie in a dark room and try to sleep it off. I usually feel nauseous and sometimes vomit, and I definitely have no appetite. It's quite common for them to be gone by mid-afternoon but then I tend to feel completely wiped out for at least 24h. Sometimes I get them multiple days in a row.

I do sometimes have some aura-type symptoms that accompany the migraine in the early stages (though not necessarily prior to it starting - I'm usually asleep then. For example I might yawn a lot, or sometimes have visual disturbances.

i lose vision in my right eye and roughly 50% vision in my left eye

I get several symptoms that don’t always happen at once…It depends on the migraine

• vision or an ocular aura that usually doesn’t have pain
• nausea
• extreme sinus pain
• tooth ache
• stiff neck
• Extreme sensitivity to smells/smelling things that aren’t there
• spaceyness… like walking out of a store without paying level of spaceyness
• throbbing pain from the base of my skull and from my forehead meeting in the middle

it depends on what type of migraine/cluster headache I get as to the symptoms.

When I couldn't even attempt to go on my phone

Migraines for me involve a few obvious signs and a few more subtle ones. Most obviously, I have an aura (I see a rainbow zigzig that spreads out across one half of my field of vision, and then temporary blindness on the same side) about twenty minutes before an excruciating headache. The headache is always the opposite side of my head to the aura and never crosses over to the other side or covers my whole head- for the side affected, the pain is throbbing more than the constant dull pain of a stress headache, and it feels worst in the back of my eye. I also have to take antiemetics, because the nausea sets in just after the pain.

Once the headache has passed, about a minimum of five hours, I then have about twenty-four hours of acute depression and fatigue, it feels like I've had the flu. In hindsight, I often experience a milder headache a couple of days before a migraine along with less severe depression and fatigue, but that's not usually a clear enough sign to predict a migraine before the aura hits. It's worth looking up more information to see if it sounds like your symptoms could be migraine and going to the doctor if it's your first time having one- I have triptans and anti-emetics prescribed so that I can cut the migraine off before the pain even hits, and it's good to be prepared if you might have another migraine in future.

Hi... I believe different sufferers of migraines can show a variety of symptoms.

The main one tho' tends to be that it's mainly down one side of your head, whether that's at the top, or temple, or ears and behind the ear, back of the jaw and into the neck.

Also behind your head.

It can also be a continual pain, or an intermittent "lightning strike" pain.

Some also experience nausea, or actual physical sickness.

Some get aura with or without pain.

There are a LOT of preventative meds, some of which may work for you, or none may ever work.

The test time to take each kind of preventative med is roughly two to three months, so it can take ages to find a preventative that might work for you.

The usual painkillers are meds that are "triptans" ie sumatriptan, rizatriptan and I think about four others.

I've had migraines for over forty years, and of all the preventative drugs, treatments, injections (Botox etc) there has only been ONE type to help me....
...................................it's an anti cgrp injection, I had it prescribed to me about twenty two months ago, and whilst they haven't disappeared altogether, my intake of painkillers has reduced massively down to under twenty doses so far this year alone.

I would get yourself referred to a neurologist OP, and while your waiting for an appointment, keep a pain diary of the days you get an attack, note whether it's a one out of ten pain or a ten out of ten pain, or anything in between.

Also note if you took a painkiller and how many that day.

The neurologist tends to ask for this info.

Oh yes, and whether you notice if you get your attacks around a period or not, as some migraines are hormonal.

I likely haven't remembered to mention everything, but above is a good start.

You may also want to note if you think certain triggers like noise, light, smells, or foods , too much sleep not enough sleep, start you off.

This is complex, as some people have a combination of triggers.

Some people get very emotional with an attack, and I've found that my capacity for memory has greatly reduced.

It certainly doesn't help when your told by friends and family " oh yes, I get bad headaches".....

I feel fo you OP, and I hope you find help very soon.

I'm a chronic migraine sufferer (slightly less so in the last 10 years), I know it's a migraine when I'm throwing up and genuinely feel like I might die. My husband reassures me that I won't and brings me an ice cold sock for my head.

My migraines are becoming less severe, but I think it's because I'm catching them earlier. I've just realised that I've got a migraine coming because I've just been a little unco-ordinated, things are harder to think about, and I've just got one of my mugs out to make DD3 a cup of tea. It's those little oddities that I now realise are the pre-cursor to a migraine, whereas before I wouldn't accept that it was a migraine before I had a severe headache and pain going down the back of my neck, etc. I'll take my cocktail (zolmitriptan, naproxen, prochlorperazine) now and hopefully it will never get to the severe stage.

For me, it’s when I can’t see - blotchy vision and bright squiggly lines - and this starts out the blue and is the first sign one is coming on. I then lose feeling in my limbs and tongue (so start slurring my speech), get very confused and my brain sort of stops working and I muddle words and forget how to do simple tasks and if I’m at work when it hits and afterwards go back and look at what I’d been typing - it’s complete nonsense. Sensitive to light. I immediately go and lie down in a dark room. All this is then accompanied by a thumping, throbbing headache in one temple that is so painful. I then start feeling very sick and vomiting and shaky and cold (although if I take my prescribed medication, Rizatriptan, quick enough I can usually stop the vomiting, but not the feeling sick). For me, if it’s just a headache then it’s not a migraine - and I’ve had some bad headaches. Mine also hit completely out the blue too if I’m sat there having the time to debate whether or not it’s a migraine - it’s likely not a migraine. I’d see it as a migraine when it completely incapacitates me. If I get one and I’m alone with my little boy - luckily hasn’t happened I’ve always had DH with us - I will have to call for someone to come as I can’t look after him properly.