Nausea and Vomiting – Migraine Symptoms

Nausea and vomiting are typical symptoms experienced by migraine sufferers during an attack. If you experience nausea, vomiting or diarrhea with your headaches, don’t panic. It is known that migraine is the type of headache most likely to make you feel nauseated. Therefore, these are the physical signs that often differentiate a migraine from other types of headache. Also, visual side effects like light sensitivity also a common experience for a person with migraine headache.

While headache is common but definitely not normal to experience regularly. Here is a short list of common types of headache experienced by many individuals in Singapore. It is important to note that not all headaches are associated with nausea.

Headache: 

• Migraine Headache
• Tension-type Headache
• Sinusitis
• Cervicogenic Headache
• Dehydration Headache

Nausea is an uneasy and queasy feeling or discomfort in the stomach. This feeling can be so severe that it causes limitation in activities of daily living (ADL) and is therefore a major cause of migraine disability. Nausea can happen by itself or it may cause vomiting. Furthermore, it can sometimes be accompanied by dizziness as well. Those who experience frequent, persistent nausea with a migraine are twice as likely to progress from episodic or infrequent migraine headaches to chronic migraine. When this happens it will greatly impact one’s daily living.

How Nausea and Vomiting impact migraine sufferers

1. inability to participate in regular activities
2. symptoms usually start and end quickly
3. can last for hours and sometimes days
4. sufferers typically feel worse with movement
5. sufferers usually feel better being still or laying down
6. vomiting often makes the migraine pain go away