Migraine is a mysterious disease. Doctors have not yet come to a consensus as to why these violent and painful attacks of a pulsating headache occur. But there is a kind of this disease, of which little is known, the so-called eye migraine.
Migraine in all its manifestations suffers, according to various sources, from 3 to 10% of the inhabitants of the Earth, most of them are women. Violent headaches were tormented by Julius Caesar, Isaac Newton, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Frederic Chopin, Sigmund Freud. Symptoms similar to this disease were first described by ancient Sumerians for 3 thousand before Christmas. In the days of Ancient Egypt, it was believed that migraine is caused by evil spirits, and in order to rid the person of them, sometimes they even made trepanation of the skull.
During an attack that lasts from a couple of hours to several days, except for a pulsating headache, weakness and lethargy are observed, nausea and vomiting, cold sweat, irritability to light and sounds.
There is such a kind of disease as eye migraine, scientifically - ciliary scotoma (scotoma scintillans). During periodic attacks, the patient deteriorates the image in certain areas of the visual field, but around the area of blindness, or crossing it, a flickering spot appears.
The patient sees glowing lines, painted in different colors, of very different shapes-zigzags, teeth, a jagged wall of ancient fortresses, sparks, falling stars, etc. These effects increase for a few minutes or even a couple of hours, then go to the periphery and disappear there. Often, attacks of ocular migraine are accompanied or terminated by severe headaches.
This is how one of the sufferers describes this condition in his blog, which the attack caught up driving a car in a traffic jam. "Suddenly I saw a shimmering translucent iridescent spot right in the center of my field of vision, and for several minutes it spread and grew thick, obscuring my view, which lasted about half an hour, and it was not with my eyes, but deep in my brain. I felt completely disoriented. "
To explain to others what the patient sees during the attack, the author even made a flash movie, using animation, clearly demonstrating the phenomenon.
From the comments to this clip it becomes clear that some people really suffer from eye migraine. Many of them did not understand what was going on and did not know that this disease has a name. The general tone of the replicas is as follows: I will not wish anyone to experience this. And if one sick attack caught in a traffic jam, then another - during a fight at the city championship in Taekwondo.
The mechanism of the onset of ocular migraine is incomprehensible. How to deal with it and prevent it is also unknown. Some people are helped by no-shpa and paracetamol, but this only partially reduces the headache. And the optical effect, which many compare with hallucinations, remains. It is obvious that if an attack finds, for example, on the road, it is better to wait it out in a safe place so as not to risk your own and others' lives.