Hi, Are there any known links from Mi... - National Migraine...
Hi, Are there any known links from Migraines to MS or Parkinsons disease? as some of my symptoms make me wonder if there is more going on.
I have been wondering the same thing for some time, now.
Are some of your symptoms pretty much the same? I know a neurological problem can have many different faces, but muscle weakness, heavy useless limbs, joint stiffness + pain, only to name a few must be linked somewhere.
Yes, I've had those symptoms you've mentioned for a long time, Clumsyclot. Now I say I have Chronic Fatigue / M.E. as seriously or more as I have migraines. But also, aswell as those symptoms you mentioned, increasingly, mental fatigue, greatly worsening memory, some incapacity in mental - physical relationship with movement (it's not just in the limbs themselves as it had been before, visual and spatial problems also), and serious inability to concentrate on anything beyond very simple tasks. (However, apart from the latter, they can just vanish for some periods also - while these are quite short. Unfortunately, I can assume I'm just normal again, and this is a major part of my problem at the moment. I get more sick very quickly, especially when I don't realise the lull doesn't mean I should be doing things).
Also, within the last couple of years or so, uncontrollable, epileptic looking bodily movements (the neurologist says 'hypnagogic / hypnic jerks'), and cataplexy.
I know there is a possible genetic link between Migraine and Epilepsy bbc.co.uk/news/health-20908903
which is interesting as my mum is epileptic. My uncle (her brother) has MS, and there are plenty on the other side of my family who have ME and a myriad of mental disorders (mainly depression, which is often a migraine comorbidity).
So it kind of seems like there are potential vague genetic links between these things but no conclusive proof.
When my aura symptoms are really bad and without the headache it has occured to me that it is similar symptoms to MS but my GP seemed to think I was fine
I used to simply assume my worsening complex of symptoms were a "natural" result of unnaturally suffering very frequent, very severe migraines over years and years. But more and more I wonder if it's something like M.S. or another auto immune disorder, or another neurologic complex condition, and migraines were just the preliminary signs over years.
I agree completely that the mental confusion and lack of hand to eye coordination, and concentration lapses are awfully worrying, and like you say Icb1 they do seem to be deteriorating the "normal" times and effecting my actual personality over the years of suffering them. Couple these with the slurred speach, stutters, clumsiness and shaking limbs and you can understand why we are asking these questions when doctors seem to think it's fine and just fob you off with more drugs and another sick note. This is our lives we need help and answers. I know the link between epilepsy and migraine isnt even that explored, even tho the meds and shaking, vague periods, confusion and even the down time fatigue of the aftermath are compeling evidence in itself. Like you say georgiegone that when you throw in depression and Allergies like other auto immunity problems I do think there is a lot more to Migraines than meets the eye, and worry yet hope for more help to be made available in the future.
Migraines & neurological problems can be caused by Antiphospholipid syndrome/Hughes syndrome. I've suffered from migraine, multiple neurological symptoms & fatigue for years. Initially diagnosed with ME then they thought possible MS, the correct diagnose APS which explains all my symptoms.
Yes often MS turns out to be APS as the scans and symptoms can prevent in similar fashion. dailymail.co.uk/health/arti... Mary F x
I've been told I don't have epilepsy, Clumsyclot, basically because it doesn't seem I had it earlier in life, before I reached mid to late teens. Apparently it won't develop after that. As for relationships between migraine and epilepsy / between migraine and similar symptoms to epileptic symptoms, I don't know where that could leave things.
Another thing I worried about was kind of spacing out - losing all concentration, for example when someone was talking to me. I just go into a short kind of coma, but am aware of it, just not the detail of what's happening around. I'm told by a neurologist this could not be epileptic "absence" as the unfortunate epileptics who suffer that have no idea of their absence at the time of it. So, I guess this means epileptic absence really just means sudden, complete unconsciousness. In this case, the word "absence" seems better to describe what I suffer rather than the total loss of consciousness the epileptics suffer. Though the doctor uses the term depersonalisation for what I experience. (Am I right that this may be used with dementia or Parkinsons or Alzheimers?)
But, it made me think how rigid the medical world is, and how this can seem strange, especially when in areas such as neurology there seems much more unknown than known. For example, take narcolepsy. Beyond defining this as a physical, rather than mental, condition, medics have no idea what it actually is beyond some symptoms, or what may cause it. In this condition, as with most, the noted symptoms appear to be rigid and inflexible, so that someone suffering from most symptoms or more or less symptoms of narcolepsy may not be diagnosed with that condition, but perhaps only the symptoms alone.
I suppose you have to conclude either that this is correct now, or it's just that, as in the past, medics do that for they work on a very long timescale with what they don't know. They decide to make a certain hitch in a post, which may develop and change over decades and decades. Which may or may not prove not much help for some sufferers of today.
I'm not really being critical because I think I'd have to understand more before I'd criticise approaches. What I'm saying is only that approaches to patients with malaises associated with neurology can seem strange.
I guess, though, every neurologist would have backlog lists of wishes for areas of trials, and everything takes so long in research.
Not what you're looking for?
Moderation team
