There are headaches and headaches and migraines. Simply defined, a migraine is the worst form of headache imaginable. Attacks may begin with sensory disturbances lasting from minutes to hours, followed by the onset of head pain, which at its peak may be so severe as to cause nausea and vomiting, accompanied by extreme sensitivity to light and sound.
As with recurring headaches, a migraine needs a correct diagnosis to rule out any underlying physical cause. They tend to fall into two categories:
- The classic migraine has a warning associated with it in the form of visual or neurological disturbances that precedes the head pain. There can be nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light often causing momentary visual impairment, double vision, numbness, tingling, vertigo, difficulty speaking and weakness on one side of the body.
- The more common migraine does not have such a warning before the head pain slowly increases in intensity. It is typically accompanied by nausea, vomiting and visual disturbances.They are notoriously difficult to deal with, but as always the right remedy will cure. There are fine shadings to the symptom pictures of headaches and migraines necessitating a large number of remedies to cover these variations.
The last issue covered headaches under a number of sub-headings. This issue covers migraines, which are said by some to not be headaches but, as ever, the symptom picture determines the remedy, and the one which best fits the symptoms should be taken no matter which heading the remedy is listed under.
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Positive feedback on the editorial “On the up and up” in the last issue of Homoeopathica is appreciated. Interest was expressed in the detailed historical examples of homœopathy used to prevent disease and its use as a treatment of disease in epidemics by both members reading the journal and others seeing it posted on our website.
Monty Firmin