Migraines: what causes them, who gets them and how to treat them – medication or meditation

Simon Cowell, Elle Macpherson, Ben Affleck and Janet Jackson are just four celebrities that suffer from one of the world’s most common diseases: migraine. We look at this debilitating condition and its causes and treatments

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Migraines affect 14 per cent of the population and can be debilitating. Photo: Alamy

Published: 9:02pm, 12 Jun 2018Updated: 6:35pm, 13 Jun 2018

What do actors Ben Affleck, Gwyneth Paltrow and Hugh Jackman, Olympian swimmer Ian Thorpe, reality TV judge Simon Cowell, basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, pop singer Janet Jackson, supermodel Elle Macpherson and I – and possibly you, too – reportedly have in common? We all suffer from migraines.

Ben Affleck suffers from migraines. Photo: Alamy

It’s the third most common disease in the world (behind dental caries and tension-type headaches), affecting more than 14 per cent of people, according to an editorial in The Journal of Headache and Pain.

This chronic disorder of the brain causes recurrent severe attacks, from once or twice a year to nearly daily in some unfortunate people. Attacks present as headaches, often with nausea and dizziness, skewed vision and a disabling sensitivity to light or sound.

When I am felled by a migraine, I cannot function without medication and sleep. I can tell instantly, by the location of my headache, whether it’s a migraine or a regular headache. My migraines are always left sided, usually accompanied by nausea, and don’t respond to paracetamol or ibuprofen.

Gwyneth Paltrow is another migraine sufferer, two thirds of people who have migraines are women. This has been linked the hormone oestrogen. Photo: AP

As nasty as migraines are, they are not rare. Dr Terrance Li, a Hong Kong-based specialist in neurology, says about five per cent to 10 per cent of males and 15 per cent to 20 per cent of females have them. About two-thirds of migraine sufferers are women.

UK-based consultant neurologist Dr Fayyaz Ahmed says experts do not have a definitive answer as to what happens in the brain during an attack, noting there are many hypotheses, but none have been fully proved.

“The current best understanding is that a certain part of the brain – the hypothalamus – has an area that works a bit like a light switch or migraine generator which causes the posterior part of the brain to start generating an electric wave that prompts a narrowing of the blood vessels. As a result, chemicals are released that will cause dilation of the blood vessels and pain and inflammation in certain parts of the brain,” Ahmed says.