What’s Triggering Your Debilitating Headaches?

Numerous people endure migraines, which make it hard to function in day-to-day life. To reduce headache frequency, physicians encourage patients to identify and avoid triggers, which can increase migraine occurrence. That said, new research suggests that it’s unreasonable to expect migraine sufferers to successfully recognize their specific triggers, due to a host of variables which change from minute to minute.

Finding the Cause

Researchers out of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center say that most migraine sufferers will never be able to conclusively identify their individual triggers. Traditionally, doctors tell patients to keep a daily record of dietary habits and activities to better ascertain what’s causing their headaches; however, this recent study suggests that this strategy isn’t very effective.

According to the study, migraine sufferers can never get a real handle on their triggers, thanks to daily fluctuations related to hormones, stress, physical exertion and even weather. In fact, the researchers said conditions would have to be so ideal for a sufferer to successfully identify a trigger; it would only happen once every 24 months.

Pinpointing Causes

Unpredictable and confusing, migraines can happen for a number of reasons, depending on each individual sufferer’s genetic characteristics. While some people develop migraine headaches due to taxing physical activity; others can blame food allergies. Many times, people aren’t even having migraines; in fact, quite often, debilitating headaches are actually symptoms of temporomandibular joint disorder (TMD).

Getting Expert Evaluation

If you have chewing difficulties, facial tenderness, jaw pain or jaw popping in addition to your debilitating headaches, you could have TMD. In this case, a single effective treatment can eliminate all of your symptoms by correcting the source of the problem within the temporomandibular jaw joint.

As the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center study showed, self-evaluation doesn’t work very well when it comes to preventing headaches. For a reliable evaluation, you need professional help. Contact Smile Columbia today or call