What Causes Headaches In People With MS

What Causes Headaches in People with MS?
Many different things can cause headaches in people with MS, including:

Lesions: A study looking at 277 MS patients suggested an association between number of midbrain lesions and migraine headaches. Interestingly, cluster headaches in people with MS have also been shown to be linked with lesions in this area of the brain, where the trigeminal nerve, which is also called the fifth cranial nerve, originates. (The 12 cranial nerves emerge directly from the brain instead of from the spinal cord.) This is the nerve that is involved in the other “most painful MS symptom” – trigeminal neuralgia or tic doloureux. However, most headaches are not associated with MRI findings.

Just thought some people might be interested, I think now reading on that my headache sounds more cluster like, especially with the explosion feeling behind my eye, but this info matches what my Dr tells me about my lesions causing my migraines.

Cheers,
Udkas

[HVAC]

I wish my Neurologist would see this. That is where my lesions are and he claims that MS and headaches are not linked.
Alex

[Lulu54]

Hi udkas,
can you give Alex the source for this so it can be printed and sent to her neuro?  

[Nancy T]

Very interesting. I think the trigeminal nerve is what causes the pain of migraines, and the trigeminal nerve can be affected by MS... so it sounds like maybe that's the connection. Makes sense!

[Udkas]

Hi,
My Dr has always maintained that there is a link between where the lesion is located and migraine, he basically told me that they go hand in hand/that my migraines were kinda secondary to my Transverse Myelitis or part of it....

You can get cervical headaches form lesions in your cervical spine and migraines from lesions in your brain stem.   Apparently if you have brain stem lesions you are more likely to get migraines.

This would fall in with the 5th cranial nerve stuff with my tongue numbness, trigiminal neuralgia, facial symptoms.  I guess it could all just be a migraine too, as I have reached that wonderful age of maybe heading toward menopause. Who knows.

My neuro also said that when I get a migraine that it would make all my other symptoms worse, just like having an infection/being hot etc.., but what I find hard now is am I having another attack/flare or is this just migraine.. My general Dr wasn't sure. :-) He thought tongue stuff had gone on too long,

Here is the link: For those that are interested in reading the full article

http://ms.about.com/od/signssymptoms/a/headache_gen.htm

[Nancy T]

This is really fascinating; thanks so much for posting this info and your neuro's opinion about it.

I have trigeminal-nerve symptoms on both sides of my face (including a long history of electric shocks), and they started in the same month as my first-ever visual migraine aura, in the same general time period as all my other weird things started. Of course, I do have a strong family history of migraine too, so either way it's not surprising.

I have often wondered whether a lot of my paresthesias and whatnot are due to migraine... but I have a number of other symptoms that are definitely totally unrelated to migraine.

[Udkas]

I am glad you find this post interesting, this I hope is the whole idea of this forum, so that we can learn from each other, help, support each other and all benefit from each others information.  I think I have felt so horrid lately I needed to vent without losing my friends...lol so I needed people who might understand, and what better place than with people who might be experiencing the same.

I have asked my neurologist every single visit if he thinks my problems are just complicated migraine and he always tells me no. Next visit I am going to ask him why he thinks not, but I think I already know the answer to that, as he always tells me that he finds abnormalities on exam that indicate spinal cord lesions.

He was the one that told me I was getting migraines and that I was having auras. He also told me that you can get migraine symptoms without the headache, apparently migraine is not a true headache anyway.  I get lots of electric shock stuff too and bad nerve pain, my symptoms are not limited to one side (I think that's why I get the diagnosis of Transverse Myelitis), but he did tell me he hasn't ruled out MS. My last two MRI have been spinal cord only, so when I have my next one he is doing the brain againl, note the again. My neuro also has gone to great lengths to explain to me that MRI are not everything and can miss lesions. It depends on the software, how fast they run the machine etc. If you have an MRI on a T3 machine and it is processing to fast it will give the quality of a 1.5 etc.

My GP who admits he has no idea but is lovely anyway, said he thinks that my numbness in my groin and pubic area etc. would not be migraine, and I don't think migraine affects the bladder, but that's all okay at the moment.

Cheers,
Udkas.

[Nancy T]

Hi Udkas--yes, it's true that migraine does NOT have to involve a headache. Migraine is a complicated cascade of neurological and vascular events spreading through the brain and brainstem, and an attack can include (or not include) visual or other aura, photophobia, phonophobia (light or sound sensitivity), tingling or numbness (in face, arm, and/or leg, etc.), difficulty talking, difficulty understanding speech, nausea and/or diarrhea (abdominal migraine), dizziness, etc.

Migraine attacks can manifest with certain symptoms at one time of a person's life and with different symptoms at another point in the same person's life.

In high school, I had times of near-daily headaches, which I never knew were migraine and never told anyone about (I thought it was normal to get headaches, because my mom always had them). After that, no problems until age 42, during perimenopause (hormone shifts can bring on migraine activity).

At age 42, I had my first visual migraine and panicked, thinking I was having a stroke! But no headache. I had three visual migraines over about 6 months.

In later years, I would sometimes wake up in early morning with nausea and diarrhea, thinking I had the flu, but a few hours later I'd be fine. I now believe those were also migraine attacks (which often occur upon awakening).

I've long speculated (after reading about the migraine-dizziness connection and for various other reasons) that my dizziness may be due partly to ongoing, low-level migraine activity, but the doctors don't agree with me.

Your neurologist sounds very knowledgeable and also very good in his willingness to explain things to you and give you his honest opinions. You're lucky to have one so willing to answer questions. Keep us posted on what he says and how your tongue and other symptoms are going.

Feel better soon!

Nancy

[catasawrus]

i have had chronic headachs/ migrains daily for 8 months.
painkillers stoped working, however meditation (10 mins per day) saw my pain drop from a 9 to a 1 in 7 days. i couldnt believe it. its free to try, theres heaps of tips online, no side effects and the best thing is you dont need to see a doctor first!

as an aside i was speaking to my ms nurse about my fatigue (co-current) and she said "that sounds like a migraine"......ya think lol