Flex and Frooms Flex and Frooms. This is the Flex and Frooms catch up podcast.
You're back with Flexi and Throum and Flexi. A few weeks ago, I was talking to you about my migraines.
Yes, quite a touchy topic.
Some would say I didn't know until then, and I do apologize. I was like a migraine down players getting headaches. No, they're not headaches.
A migraine denier, MiG well Abridge A Brookie has gone ahead and found procured an experts, an expert. His name is Carl Cincinnato and he is a migraine expert. He's actually the director of operations at Migraine and Headache Australia, which I think is very important having an institute for US migraine girlies.
He and Pam Padami Davems.
Brought a migraine community.
He's lived in migraines for thirty years. We're just going to jump straight into the chat.
Here is Carl. Hello, Hey, Carl, such a pleasure.
Now. I'm just reading through this sheet and it says you're the operations director at Migraine and Headache Australia and you've lived with migraines for thirty years, so I think you're a good person to tell us. What is the difference between migraines and headaches.
Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot of differences between it. A lot of people think that migraine is actually just a bad headache. We've all heard of migraine, and it's used sometimes as an excuse, usually by those that don't have migraine to get out of things. But there's a lot of things that are quite different. So if you look at a typical tension headache, which is what ninety percent of the population has experienced, those are usually mild
to moderate. With a migraine, the head pain is actually moderate to severe, and it could be so severe that can cause nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light, sound, and movement, And in fact, those things are so common that it's actually used to diagnose migraine. So if you have regular headache that cause light sensitivity or nausea, or that are interrupting your activities on a relatively frequent basis, then there's
something like a ninety percent probability that's actually migraine. You do need to go to get diagnosed, but there's a lot of people in a show out. At least half the population that have migraine that haven't even been diagnosed yet, I think they have another condition. But to talk about some of the key differences, attention headache will sort of come and go. It may last twenty minutes to a couple of hours. Migraine will last four to seventy two
hours if not treated. And attention headache is kind of just there and then it's not. It kind of self resolves. Migraine actually has four phases to it. There's a prodrome, there's an aura, there's the migraine head pain itself, and then there's a post rome. And I'm happy to talk more about those as well.
If you like, Yes, can you give us like a rundown of let's use one of your migraines for example, Can you talk us through what that looks like over a day or however long it.
Happens to you.
Yeah. So there's different subtypes of migraine. I have a subtype of migrine called migraine with aura, or sometimes known as classical migraine.
One of my communitys like traditional appearance, the original Sorry, yeah, but.
You don't want it, I mean, you don't want any type of migraine, but classical migraine or marine with aura involves something like it's called a visual aura, and it's it affects people in different ways. About thirty percent of people with migraine experiences, but typically what happens is I have a visual disruptance, and for me, it's a they
call it a skintulating scotoma. It's basically a shimmering of light or zigzag lines that start in the peripheral vision and move into your central vision in sort of one eye, and it's actually a brain phenomenon. It's not actually caused by the eyes. So when you close your eyes, you actually still see the zigzag lines and it's kind of like looking after the sun, and then you kind of get that blurriness or that sort of visual sort of impairment, and then when you look away, you kind of can't
quite focus or see anything just yet. It's like that, but it can last between twenty and forty minutes, and that's kind of the second phase of the migraine for me. The first phase that is called prodrome, and that can involve things like just strange kind of sensory things like pins and needles, in the lips and nose or fingertips like kind of in extremities, it can evolve sort of tired in a successive yawning. Even exceptive urination has been
reported in this phase of migraine. And that phase can kind of happen twenty four hours before the actual attack itself, so very very different sootypical tension headache that we might experience, and then you have the aura, and then after the aura follows the head pain, and that can be sort of moderate to severe and can be very debilitating for a lot of people, particularly when you have sort of light sensitivity and sensitive to sound and movement. There's not
a lot you can really do. It's extremely difficult to function. And then in the final phase of a migraine attack, it's called the post rome, and that's where experiences very greatly again within the population of people that have migraine. Some people feel just completely washed out, like you've just been beaten up or hit by a truck. Other people feel this sense of elation, like they feel really good and it's like they've got a new leaf of life.
They feel better, the pain's gone, and they're full of energy and ready to get back into things. So it's a very individual experience, but again a very different one.
The headache truly sounds terrifying, and I don't know why we're not telling the real tales of migraine. When Brooke out producer and Frough described to me, it's flex here what the migraines were like, I said, how are you living like this day to day? Especially in an environment of people like, oh, you'll be fine, just take some insert pharmaceutical.
Treat here.
But I wanted to know. I've never had a migraine before. And if we're going to be candid, and I will be candid with you, KRL, I live quite an unhealthy lifestyle. Rarely drink water, preservative base, if there's sugar in it, I will consume it. And yet migraines like I don't get them.
Now.
I don't know if there's a correlation, But do you know why some people get migraines and some don't, or will I eventually evolve into being a migraine sufferer.
It's a great question. So there's two kinds of reasons why people get migraines. Two big reasons. One is called it's from genetics, right, So if you have a family history of it, if you have a certain combination of genes. There's no one gene that we've found that causes migraine and absolutely everyone there is if you have hemaplegic migraine, which is a severe form of migraine, But there's not
one gene that. There's an association of different genes and they can play a role, and scientists think that that's about fifty percent of the cause. The other fifty percent
is are these factors called our environmental factors. So we know that if you've had multiple concussions like head injuries, have you've been in a car accident where you had whiplash or even a concussion in that incident, If you'd have any form of childhood abuse, whether that's physical, emotional, sexual, or even sort of extremely difficult emotional periods like the death of an immediate family member at a critical point or at any point, or extremely stressful situation, those can
all set it off. And those are what we call kind of the environmental factors, are things that happened to you whilst the thing not just inherited.
Interesting, Yeah, the hemoplegic one is the one that I had as a kid, but it's somehow gone away as I've gotten older. Do you see that with some migraine sufferers that when they hit a certain age, they disappear Like it's crazy to me to think that now I'm twenty four and they're gone.
I want to change the term to migraine survivor if I could do that, I said suffer initially. I'm taking it back survivor.
Yeah, And a lot of people call themselves worries, right because it really is like you're waging war against this, you know, this beast, and it happens on two main fronts. One is the pain itself and the disruption, and that's awful, and that in itself is really tough. But for people that have chronic migraine, and chronic migraine is defined it's fifteen days or more out of the month, so more than half your life with migraine is it is brutal
and incredibly difficult, and that takes its all psychologically. It affects people's mental health. We know the people that have frequent migraine are four to six times more likely to have a mental health issue like depression or anxiety. So it really is you know, for people that are migrine survivors or warriors, like they really are bubtling and they really have thought to get to you know, to get to where they are.
Yeah, damn. All right, Well, thank you, Kyl.
That's a nice summation of migraines right there for anyone listening. If you're like me and you hear about migraines in your mouth starts watering because they're so disgusting. I apologize for this broadcast, really appreciate your time.
Thank you, Kyl, Thanks for having me. See you later. You've been listening to The Flex and Froom's daily podcast.
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