Migraines during pregnancy

Migraines during pregnancy may affect any women but it is not obligatory fact that every pregnant person will experience this condition. Almost every future mother experiences some headaches but it does not mean that she is affected by migraines during pregnancy. There exist a lot of other different types of headaches which has nothing in common with migraines and pregnancy. Typical feature of migraine includes moderate or severe pain (the severity may vary from one attack to another), pain may affects one side of the head or both of them, the duration may vary from several hours to several days. Migraines during pregnancy may be preceded by several symptoms such as blurred vision, numbness or tingling in the individual’s arms and legs. These symptoms may also show themselves not only before the migraine attack but also during it. Such companions are also called auras. If you experience headaches and noticed some changes with your vision (for example blurred vision, flashes of light) it does not really mean that to problems with the head you are to add eyes problems. This may be neurological symptom and refers to migraine. Those women who suffer from migraine before pregnancy may experience more severe manifestations of the disease especially during first three month of this “interesting state”.

Be careful! Migraine and pregnancy may have the same symptoms. Usually a lot of pregnant women experience sickness (in most cases it is morning sickness) and fatigue due to hormonal changes in the organism (many future mommies noticed that they feel tiredness and want to sleep longer). These two symptoms may also be the “alarm bells” to show that your headache is not a simple head pain which is caused by different daily reasons. Dizziness and extremely sensitivity to the light and sounds may also point on the migraines during pregnancy.

Talking about causes of migraine during pregnancy it is possible to blame hormonal changes as in almost every new condition in the organism during this wonderful state. But the disease may have nothing in common with hormones. It may be caused by changes in nerve pathways. The other condition – imbalance of brain chemicals – is also considered to be the cause of migraine. It is worth of knowing that serotonin (one of the brain chemicals) is a great helper in regulating of the pain in the individual’s nervous system, and imbalance of this substance may have an impact onto appearing of the migraine.

Not all causes of migraine are connected with the nervous system, hormonal changes and other internal changes. This disease may also be cause by outer factors and it is in women’s forces to try to avoid them in order to reduce migraine attacks. Such triggers and factors which may aggravate the condition of the migraine during pregnancy include stress, fatigue, loud noise, glaring lights, excessive cold or heat, smoke of the tobacco, alcohol, excessive usage of caffeine. Also it is possible to add some food products which may influence the flow of the disease. Among them it is possible to distinguish chocolate, artificial sweeteners and nitrates in different processed meats.