How often do you take OTC medication?
I'm totally confused about migraines. I only had mine diagnosed when I had 4 auras over 5 days which led to an MRI and neurologist appointment. She's got me keeping a diary, but headache is not my main symptom and even with headache it comes and goes for hours or days. I just don't know for sure it's migraine and not tension headache. I normally would take paracetamol or nurofen like once a year. And half a dose, so the idea of popping a pill is just alien to me. But at the same time I am definitely having symptoms around ovulation and menstruation and now that my periods are 3 weeks apart that means I'm lucky to have 1 week a cycle that I feel normal. I guess this is a long winded way of saying, should I just pop a pill whenever I want to??? Just to see if it helps if nothing else?
Hi lynster,
Thank you for reaching out to us. Experiencing aura is not part of tension-type headache, but may be migraine with aura.
Keeping a migraine diary is a great way to see what our migraine attack triggers are and help identify any patterns our attacks may have.
If we have four or more sever migraine attacks a month, it's time to discuss migraine prevention with the doctor.
The thing about taking over-the-counter (OTC) medications too frequently is it can put us at an increased risk for rebound headache. If we take pain relief medications and/or migraine medications more than two to three days a week we may end up in a rebound cycle. If so, our migraine attacks may be more difficult to treat and we could end up in a daily cycle of pain that too, may be hard to break. You can read more about this here; https://migraine.com/living-migraine/stop-rebound-headaches/
I hope this helps,
Nancy
