How to relieve a migraine?

Our Global Medical Institute center focuses on three categories of migraine: frontal migraines, occipital migraines and temporal migraines.

Global Medical Institute makes a point of distinguishing between the different types of migraine, depending on the starting point of your migraine pain. Indeed, our primary focus is on the pain you experience during migraine attacks.

As you can see, it’s very important for you to be able to pinpoint the starting point of your pain, so that we can offer you the right treatment. A treatment that will soothe you, calm your pain and reduce or even eliminate the symptoms of your migraine.

It is just as important that you should be able to relieve your migraine on your own at home.

In these few lines, we'll explain the various techniques and gestures you can use to relieve your migraine or migraine attack.

Why is it important to locate the starting point of your pain? What to do in the event of a migraine? How to relieve your migraine?

In this section, you’ll find out more about the first reflexes to adopt in the event of a migraine.

The importance of locating the pain and then relieving it

At Global Medical Institute, we emphasize the importance of knowing where pain starts, in order to understand and treat it as effectively as possible. We specialize in the classification and treatment of migraine headaches, and our surgeons act on the expression of pain.

It is important to note that there are many different types of migraines and pain, and you may sometimes be confused by the definitions and terms, so pinpointing the starting point of the pain is essential to understanding your condition and treating it effectively.

Our specialist surgeons and neurologists can help you treat your migraine, whether temporal, occipital or frontal, but to target the area concerned and before starting any treatment, it's essential to know the starting point of your pain expression.

Depending on the starting point of the migraine, the specialists will be able to determine its nature and origin, and propose an appropriate treatment.

The pain may be due to nerve compression or irritation, so our specialists will ask you about the area from which the pain originates. If this area is indeed in the path of a nerve or vessels, then they can take action. To do this, after a local anesthetic, our surgeons at Global Medical Institute will decompress the nerve and free it from the structures blocking it (vessels, muscles, tendons, etc.).

We sometimes offer an initial remote consultation. This teleconsultation enables the specialists to better understand your pain and whether it can be treated with a minimally invasive approach. It is all the more important during this consultation to locate the starting point of migraines to enable our Global Medical Institute specialists to set up a treatment to remedy the pain.

What to do in the event of a migraine?

The first thing to do is to lie down. Lie down in a quiet, dark room and try to rest, or sleep if possible.

To soothe the pain, you can also apply a cold compress to the head or, on the contrary, taking a hot bath can help in some cases.

We can’t say it often enough: sleep is the best treatment. A healthy lifestyle, with regular sleep at the right times, and a very calm environment, can help you manage your migraine better. For example, to improve the quality of your sleep, it's very important not to expose yourself to artificial light from screens for several hours before going to bed, not to eat heavily in the evening, and to stop eating at least 3 hours before going to bed.

It is important to bear in mind that headaches can be indicative of illnesses or problems requiring urgent medical diagnosis: high blood pressure, stroke, brain infection, glaucoma, intoxication, etc. These illnesses are usually accompanied by other telltale signs whose association with headache should prompt consultation (discomfort with light, behavioural problems, motor disorders, etc.). Persistent headaches and new occurrences always warrant specialist medical advice.

In some cases, an initial consultation can be carried out via teleconsultation from the comfort of your own home: Global Medical Institute specialists will be able to explain whether your suffering can be relieved by our minimally invasive approach.

Please note that ordinary headaches do not lead to complications. However, it is important to determine whether they are harmless or a sign of a more serious illness. For the sake of awareness and prevention, it's best to consult a doctor. If you're prone to recurrent headaches, you may find it difficult to determine whether they're trivial or not. In this case, you should try to note whether they differ in intensity, duration and frequency in your migraine diary, which your specialist will use regularly to adapt your treatment.

How to relieve your migraine?

After lying down in a room, in the dark, away from noise, it may be a good idea to take painkillers.

Medicines are generally very effective in relieving migraines. Be careful, however, not to overuse them, which could lead to migraine medicamentosa, or headaches caused by overuse of painkillers.

The treatment of migraine has improved considerably in recent years, in particular with new families of drugs prescribed by the doctor. Drugs in the triptan family have considerably improved the quality of life of migraine sufferers. Other families of anti-migraine drugs are also prescribed: ergot derivatives, for example, or drugs originally developed for other illnesses, such as beta-blockers, anti-epileptics or anti-depressants, can reduce the intensity of your pain.

What's more, if you're a good candidate, you can benefit from our surgical techniques to relieve your migraine. To find out more about our treatments, please click on the following pages: temporal decompression, occipital decompression, frontal decompression.