I happen to be a man who gets migraines with aura, but I do think they’re more common in women. They started when I was 14.
I get visual issues like tunnel vision and sparklies, but I also get numbness in my face and extremities, confuse my words (right parts of speech, not what I intend to say), and often vomit.
Needless to say, the first one scared the crap out of my mother and I.
I may or may not have a headache when this happens.
Neat, eh? I was talking to a guy who suffered from seizures in college, and apparently his “aura” is very similar, and I've always wondered if there was some connection since my father also suffers from epilepsy.
> I get visual issues like tunnel vision and sparklies, but I also get numbness in my face and extremities, confuse my words (right parts of speech, not what I intend to say), and often vomit.
I’ve experienced migraines for years, but last year had my first instance that messed with speech. It certainly unsettled the friend I was with at the time.
Migraines and epilepsy have a lot in common, including some symptoms and triggers. Drugs and things that lower seizure threshold also tend to cause migraines. Some epilepsy drugs also act as migraine prophylactics.
I'm male and I get visual auras with migraines (not often, only once or twice a year). It's like a small area of old TV static or (as I call them) "dead pixels" in my vision. It's usually centered right in the middle of my vision, so reading becomes impossible but I could do something else.
It usually spreads a little bit before dissipating. They can happen with or before the actual migraine pain.
I sometimes but not always get an aura before a migraine.
Which was pretty fun the first time i got an aura, as i was working in a chemistry lab. I described what was happening (loss of vision, flashes of light, rapidly oscillating black and white patterns) to this greybeard lab technician and within 5 minutes the entire lab was evacuated, out of fear of some weird chemical poisoning us all.
anecdotally of course too, but is it more common for women? I've only ever known 3-4 people that got these kinds of migraines and they were all women.