Basic Facts About Optical Migraines

Optical Migraine is one of the rare types of migraine. It is also identified as ocular migraine, acephalgic migraine, amigrainous migraine or migraine aura without headache. Statistics reveal that more women suffer from this form of the disease and it is sometimes affected by the menstrual cycle.

Optical migraine rarely occurs with a headache but many believe that it is more serious than the more common types of migraine since attacks affect a larger part of the brain. Its exact cause is still not known but some experts contend that several muscles are involved when it happens. When a person has a classic migraine attack, he mostly goes through three different stages: the aura stage, the headache stage and the background stage. During the first stage, the sufferer experiences visual disturbances such as blurred vision, flashing lights and blind spots in his field of vision. He may also feel nauseous or could vomit. This stage usually lasts for an hour. An optical migraine attack only involves this first stage and does not proceed to the next one. Thus, episodes do not normally come with a headache.

Aside from the visual disturbance, other symptoms that might arise consist of tingling sensations, confusion, numbness, slurred speech and in some cases, a headache that starts on one side of the head. Like the other types of the disease, optical migraine starts with a trigger. Triggers include alcohol, stress, hormonal changes, contraceptives, hunger, certain foods (cheese, chocolate, MSG, processed meats, red wine), strong sunlight or too much exercise.

There are conventional treatments to optical migraine that sufferers can have. The more common of the conventional kind are the medications, further subdivided into acute and preventive. Acute medicines halt symptoms that come with an attack. These are NSAIDs like aspirin and ibuprofen, triptans, ergotamine and analgesics. The group of preventive drugs is composed of beta-blockers, calcium channel-blockers and anti-depressants. Preventive treatments that do not include medications can be implemented to reduce the incidence of attacks, such as healthy diet and exercise; and avoiding triggers.

Some migraineurs opt to be treated with alternative therapies that do not include drugs but use herbal remedies instead. Feverfew and butterbur are two of the most common herbs that have been found to be beneficial to migraineurs. Other therapies that are used are acupuncture, chiropractic care and homeopath medicines.

There is no single treatment that works for all optical migraine sufferers. Migraine is a chronic disease and treatment must also be viewed from a long-term perspective. An effective treatment requires collaboration between a physician and the patient and can take some time to arrive at, after several trial and error methods. It certainly takes much time and effort but the reward of finding a treatment that works and prevents the attacks from occurring, makes it all worthwhile

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Article By: Lisa Harper