Male Speaker: 35 year old Renee Tarlton stays at home to care for her three children Renee has her hands full no question about it. But until recently she also had something else that often made life's simplest task, virtually impossible to carry out migraines.
Renee Tarlton: My migraine started when I first woke up they lasted all day along 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They really was not anything that relieved the headache, I used over the counters constantly.
Merle Diamond: A lot of people have been having migraines for years but they start to miss important things or their work schedule is disruptive or one of their kids says mom are you going to have a headache today and not be able to come and I think that often will drives migraine to the office eventually.
Female Speaker: There are 45 million Americans who have chronic recurrent headache and out of that number 30 million experience migraine annually.
Suzanne Simons: It's unfortunate to note that of that 30 million who have migraine only half of those people are accurately diagnosed.
Male Speaker: So how do we know when a typical headache is actually a migraine headache?
Stephen Silberstein: If you walk into a doctor's office complaining of a headache that comes in and goes, 95% of the time its migraine. Well, we asked for the probably the pain, is it throbbing, is it severe, is it made worse by movement and we look for the associated features nausea, vomiting sensitivity to light, sound and others. So we need pain characteristics, so you need the headache to be one sided or throbbing or aggravated by movement or moderate, severe.
Male Speaker: Healthcare providers will often ask patients to keep a headache journal in order to identify potential triggers. Common triggers include things like a woman's menstrual cycle, specific foods and even certain aromas.
Male Speaker: What we believe is the biological predetermination to have migraine and what these triggers do is lower the threshold and allow the attack to progress.
Male Speaker: Renee couldn't isolate any specific triggers but she did notice that when becoming pregnant with her second child, her migraines disappeared unfortunately the relief didn't last long.
Renee Tarlton: Delivered my son and Bob this is fantastic comeback to normal 8 weeks later I felt the pressure building in head and within one day it was exactly to where I have been, the headaches came back and I was devastated.
Male Speaker: Once again living with this chronic daily pain made caring for her family almost impossible. So Renee and her husband finally made the decision to relocate and moved in with her parents, all due to her persistent migraines.
Renee Tarlton: They were so bad that at one point I couldn't even get out of the bed that if I sat up even a little bit of an angle my head felt like it was going to explode.
Male Speaker: Now Renee is being treated at a comprehensive headache clinic under the care of a group of specialists. Renee is finally getting the treatment she has needed for so long. Renee takes a combination of daily preventive therapies whether or not a headache is present. She also uses more acute medicines which are taken once a migraine headache begins, so far she has seen good results but more progresses needed.
Renee Tarlton: At least now I have times where I am better that I can function like today I do have headache but I can function. I play with my kids a lot more, I do feel like as a family we have more fun we can do lot more things.
Male Speaker: Research and development hold the keys to discovering more effective therapies for migraines hopefully they will eventually unlock the many mysteries of this stabilitating condition.
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