Eli5 what is migraine and is there a cure for it?
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You know how when you sit forwards with your elbows on your thigh for a while then take your elbows off those bits of skin where your elbows were go red?
Well basically that’s because while you’re pressing on the skin you’re reducing blood flow. Then when you stop pressing you see the blood vessels there overcompensating to feed the oxygen starved areas so those dilated (expanded) blood vessels make the skin there go red.
Similar sort of thing in the brain. Certain people have certain triggers (eg red wine, cheese, weather etc) which for some reason cause a constriction (narrowing) of blood vessels in a certain part of the brain. The part of the brain that is affected by this narrowing might also then have a temporary deficit called an “aura”. Eg if it’s a bit of the brain that affects speech then your speech will be affected. If it’s a sensory part you’ll get numbness. If it’s a visual part you’ll get funny vision. If a memory part you’ll get deja-vus etc etc. Not everyone gets an aura but many do.
Then just like liftibg an elbow off the thigh, those blood vessels overcompensate and go crazy and much bigger (expanded) than they should be. This then causes increased intracranial pressure.
The brain itself doesn’t feel pain but the lining of the brain (the meninges) are exquisitely sensitive and the slightest increase of pressure causes the horrible pain, migraine, which is often “disabling” ie so bad you feel sick and have to sleep in a dark room.
Triptans aren’t painkillers, they’re drugs that basically narrow down these expanded blood vessels back to normal size and so the pain just vanishes. Not a cure though just symptomatic relief. Much much more effective than just “painkillers” for those for whom it works.
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