Migraine with aura identified as independent risk factor for A-fib

Medical Xpress / HealthDay / Headache ^ | August 3, 2022 | Chia-Chun Chiang MD et al

[ConservativeMind]

It might be worth considering paying attention to any unusual heart beats you notice. We all get irregular heart beats, so do understand an actual Atrial Fibrillation diagnosis is a more serious situation one should be on top of.

[ConservativeMind]

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[Delta 21]

Serious as a heart attack!

[AndyTheBear]

My degree is in mathematics rather than medicine, but I’m pretty sure the way to avoid a fib is to stop making the next value in your sequence the sum of the most recent two values.

[doorgunner69]

I had a PFO plugged following a scuba decompression hit.

The doc doing the fix mentioned closing the PFO had major benefit in helping prevent strokes.

Said the major indicator for PFO closure was migraine. I used to get aura, but never with migraine.

Still have A-fib. They keep wanting me to take an anti-coag stuff like warfarin, but that stuff almost crippled me.

[ConservativeMind]

Why didn’t that need to be addressed while in childhood? I would have thought it would have been a problem for military service.

[Gene Eric]

You’re such a wealth of joy for me /sarc

But I gotta give you credit for the material you’re sharing. Really good stuff.

[ConservativeMind]

It looks like your operation decreased stroke risk more than anticoagulants:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-07-experts-strongly-catheter-based-closure.html

[Gene Eric]

You can’t be series....

[Chode]

had them for years and they went away ~ten years ago

i’ve now had 5 in the last three months...

[jimtorr]

I used to get aura, but never with migraine.

I and my sister get visual aura, sometimes called visual migraine, but she has never had actual headaches.

I, on the other hand, experienced lateral migraines for about three years, beginning after my mother died in 2010. However, the visual aura was never associated, as far as I or my neurologist could tell, with a migraine. I experienced the last migraine pain in 2013. I still get the occasional visual aura.

[Gene Eric]

The aura one experiences with a migraine is hard to describe, but those who've had it know it well.

IIRC, dilation of the blood vessels causes the visual anomalies.

A related FR post from 2015 Migraines triggered by protein deep in the brain

In their study, Akermand and Goadsby found that both VIP and PACAP caused blood vessels to dilate, but that this effect only lasted for about 10 minutes. And in the case of PACAP, the widening of blood vessels did not happen at the same time as the overactivity of neurons. In other words, the dilation of blood vessels doesn’t seem to have anything to do with migraine.

Regarding the studies, I'm not sure what to bank on; however, I rely on the aura as indicator of migraine onset. I'll take 2 Aleve (naproxen), and the symptoms are typically gone in 20 minutes. Without the suppression, the aura could last for hours. There are definite stages to the migraines I've experienced.

On the surface, this and the 2015 study seem to be at odds.

Migraines have been a life-long "headache" for me. Sucked having them as a kid — a 24 hour nightmare that didn't end until a few episodes of vomiting. I never wanted to get to that point, but I knew the Hell trip wouldn't end until then. So what's the related physiological side effects of vomiting? I never bothered to research -- no Internet back then.

[Gene Eric]

I’ve had many recently as well. And so has a friend. Hmmm...

[Does so]

I have occasional a-fib, and received a [LAD] stent five years ago.

After 40 years without migraines (MwA), I had five daily that finaly took me to the Emergency Room three days in a row!

Doc says in follow-up visit, I can take three doses of maximum Tylenol a day, but it was a potent injection at the ER that removed the worst pain I’ve ever had in my 79 years—and I’m a kidney stone sufferer!

In the earlier case—and the most rececent—it was a bright flash of light that initiated the MwA.

[Does so]

Migraines are a cousin of epilepsy.

[gattaca]

I started having migraines in my 39s and they continued until my early 60s. They can ruin your life.

[LilFarmer]

My son has both - and the triggers for both are the same (sunlight, lack of sleep, poor diet).

He is 20 now, but he switched to a modified keto diet 3 years ago which allowed him to go down to a low dose of seizure med and eliminated his migraines. I say modified because he does not eat enough to maintain his weight full keto, so he has 1-2 cheat days a week.

[wally_bert]

Lived with them most of my life.

Nothing to do except tough them out in my case.

At times I have suspected a very mild epilepsy but the neurology crowd disagrees.

[Prince of Space]

I had 5 migraine episodes in my early 20s and then a single episode 20 years later. Since then, I’ve experienced episodes of visual scotoma (aura) about 10-12 times a year. Usually there’s only a mild headache afterwards or even none at all, but I definitely feel tired and slightly disoriented for an hour or two. I’ve also noticed an association with eye strain, fatigue & dehydration.

I’m 68 with mild hypertension on medication and I’m also 20 lbs overweight. Recently my older daughter, 37, had her first episode while my younger daughter, 35, has had migraines for over 20 years, often with aura. I’m worried for their health in the future if this report turns out to be correct. However, it should be noted that this statement was at the end of the article: “Several authors disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.”

After the last 2 years of Covid vaccine hysteria, I tend to discount most studies these days, especially when drug companies are involved. IJS...

[AndyTheBear]

I kant? I don’t subscribe to Kant, I’m a Cartesian Rationalist.