If you been diagnosed with chronic migraine by your GP or neurologist and not having much benefit from the traditional medication therapies, then it might be time to consider other treatments options like interventions and nutrition options.
If you have had migraine attacks for more than 15 days a month, which have been so debilitating that they have affected your quality of life, and reduced your ability to be productive and work, then it is likely that you have a variant of migraine called chronic migraine.
There are many other treatment options that can be done for you other than just medication. Medications can have side-effects, or they may stop working and you may be wondering what your next treatment options are.
Pain consultants have been able to make a difference in the management of chronic migraine. We realized that migraine is a condition and it can have many overlapping features. It does not mean that it is only due to the nerves in and around your brain and around your neck.
We realized that sometimes tightness in the muscles or joints in the neck or even a nerve trapped in the back of the head (called a greater occipital nerve) can all contribute to it. These are conditions that pain consultants have been trained to manage and provide a variety of strategies.
What are the treatment options?
If symptoms are coming from the muscles, then trigger point injections could help. If the pain generator could be in the joint, then facet joint injections could benefit. One of the more recent interventions for chronic migraine is Botox.
There are newer electrical therapies such as Vagal nerve stimulation. We could discuss with you and decide with you because at the end of the day managing chronic migraine and headache especially in your case has to be individualized to your condition and has to be personalized to you so that we get the right strategy.