What Is Chronic Migraine?

What Is Chronic Migraine? (1:03)

Chronic migraine occurs in about 4 percent of the population. In this video, Mark Green, MD, director of the Center for Headache and Pain Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, explains chronic migraine attacks occur 15 or more days a month.

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Typically migraines last 4 to 72 hours, that's part of the definition of a migraine, however they're briefer attacks, and then there are long attacks and unfortunately there is something called chronic migraine, and that occurs in about 4% of the population, and people with chronic migraine have 15 or more days a month with headache lasting more than four hours.

Some of them have headaches everyday of their life forever. Every minute of their day, of their life forever. So they can vary widely. It's a very, very disabling condition. I think another myth is that migraine is no big deal. The World Health Organization, which evaluates conditions in terms of disability, listed migraines in number 19, most disabling condition.