Can Chronic Migraine Cause Brain Damage?

Can Chronic Migraine Cause Brain Damage? (0:53)

Patients who suffer from migraines with visual aura for a long time have a higher risk of stroke. In this video, Emily Rubenstein Engel, MD, of the Dalessio Headache Center at Scripps Clinic, explains why you should keep migraine under control.

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Chronic migraine is the specific definition that means migraine greater than 15 days a month. I would suspect maybe you're saying a patient who has had migraine for many years and a patient who has had migraine for many years, if they have frequent aura which is typically visual symptoms, that has been associated with increased risk of stroke, now it's important to understand just because you have migraine with aura, you're not going to have a stroke.

It serves as the risk factor for stroke more to high cholesterol or high blood pressure, and it's a warning that you have to kind of get it under better control to decrease the frequency.