KARACHI, July 1: At least 15 per cent of college-going students suffer migraine attacks in the city.
This is revealed by a study conducted recently by the students of the Aga Khan University Hospital in nine colleges. The study further shows that girl students are 2.5 times more likely to get migraines than boy students.
A migraine, which is an incurable but preventable disease, is a severe type of headache, usually on one side of the head, often accompanied by nausea and disturbance of vision.
According to the The Economist, one woman in five and one man in 15 suffers from migraines. “In Britain alone, some 90,000 people are absent from work every day as a result of migraines, at a cost to the economy reckoned by some to be $1.1 billion a year,” it says.
In Pakistan, no effort has been made to assess the adverse impact that migraines have on the economy. Be that as it may, neurologists point out that according to estimates five per cent men and 15 per cent women of the country’s total population suffers migraine attacks.
Dr Hasan Aziz, emeritus professor of neurology at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, says what really causes migraine is a mystery. “Migraine appears to occur cyclically among constitutionally predisposed people who tend to accumulate certain chemicals in their system. This accumulation is a slow process which grows to a pitch when a ‘bubble-burst’ phenomenon takes place. This constitutional tendency may be inherited in some people. But it alone does not cause migraine as it only makes people prone to an attack. It has to have certain precipitating factors to bring on an attack.”
According to Dr Nadir Ali Syed, neurologist at the Aga Khan University Hospital, certain factors can provoke or trigger migraine in some people. “There are a number of dietary triggers that have been reported, such as cheese, chocolate and red wine. Too much or too little sleep can trigger a migraine attack. Many women with migraine have attacks linked to their menstrual cycles. Emotional stress or response to life’s daily pressure can trigger a migraine attack in some individuals. Environmental triggers of migraine headaches include weather or temperature changes and glaring or fluorescent lights.”
Dr Hasan Aziz insists that it is wrong to conclude that migraine results from mental tension. “This is not entirely true. Mental tension more commonly causes a ‘tension headache’, but may also cause migraine among the prone. The difference between the two being that the tension headache comes on during the period of tension, while migraine attack usually after the tension period is over.”
He cites a medical report in which it was shown that some of London’s young, energetic bankers who worked extremely hard during the week and looked forward to a game of golf on a Sunday morning ended up with a migraine attack each Sunday morning. ”That is why migraine is also referred to as Golfer’s headache.”
Dr Nadir Ali Syed says that although the classic theory of migraine headaches focuses on blood vessel dilatation, more recent knowledge gained through modern neuroimaging methodologies, including positron emission tomography, suggest a neurovascular cause for migraine headaches. “A migraine attack starts in the brain, rather than the blood vessels. Certain individuals may be predisposed to hyperexcitability of certain parts of the brain, including part of the brain responsible for the visual disturbances noted frequently in those prone to migraine attacks, as well as certain pain processing pathways which cause the pain.”
Seeing eye to eye with Dr Nadir, Dr Hasan Aziz says that modern studies suggest that migraines are neurological disorders, rather than circulatory ones.