(NAPSA)—TIf you are one of the 28 million Americans with migraine, this scenario is all too familiar: You are looking forward to a nice dinner with somefriends. This will be a great ending to a stressful week at work. As you are driving to the restaurant, you start to feel the beginning stages of a migraine attack and know that you will have to cancel dinner or leave before the pain becomes unbearable. Migraineis a common butoften misunderstood condition and, in fact, one in four households has one memberof the family who is a person with migraine. Whatis a migraine? Migraine can be described as a throbbing pain on one side of the head and often becomes worse with exposure to light. It also can be accompanied by nausea, vomiting and can be aggravated by physical activity. During an attack, people with migraine often try to go about daily activities despite their excruciating pain. Routineactivities like picking up a child from a soccer game become challenging, especially when loud noises make your head pound even more. What are my options? There are many treatment options available to people with migraine. Dr. Jan Brandes from the American Council for Headache Education (ACHE), a nonprofit patient-health professional partnership dedicated to advancing the treatment and management of headache, says, “Migraine is an underdiagnosed, undertreated and misunderstood condition; however, there are a variety of treatment options for migraine. In fact, there are ways to prevent a migraine from coming on.” For some people with migraine, managing their migraine attacks with over-the-counter (OTC) medicines or acute medicines (taken at the start of a migraine to stop a migraine in its tracks) works successfully. However, for the frequent or severe migraineur, preventive treatment may be thebest option. Unlike OTC and acute medicines, preventive treatment which is taken on a daily basis can reduce the severity of a migraine attack and has the potential to stop the migraine attack even before it occurs. Preventive treatment will not stop every migraine attack but it does reduce the frequency of attacks. People who experience migraine should talk to their doctors about the frequency and severity of their migraine attacks; medications they are currently using; how often they are using their migraine medications; and how well their current migraine medications are working. Only five percent of people who suffer from migraine attacks are currently receiving preventive treatment. For more information about Migraine and preventive treatment options, visit www.4migraineprevention.com or call 1-877-7MIGRAINE.
