Migraine is undergoing a revolution. 

In recent years, everything we know - or thought we knew - about migraine and how to manage it has fundamentally changed. 

The very definition of what migraine is has changed. The 'vascular headache' theory has been debunked, and migraine has been redefined as a complex, genetic, sensory processing disorder that causes the brain to be hyper-reactive. 

In the most simple terms, you are born with a genetic difference that makes your brain work faster, and it can over-react to all kinds of things. Over-react too much, and the brain overloads, causing a migraine attack. 

Learn more about what migraine is here

A migraine language revolution

The language we use around migraine has significantly changed now that we know for certain that it is not "just a headache". 

So we don't say 'migraines' 'a migraine' anymore, we say migraine attack. Because, as a genetic and life-long condition, you only get migraine once, so it can only be singular. Just like we say 'asthma' and 'asthma attack', we don't say 'asthmas'. 

Many people will now talking about their 'Migraine Disorder' or 'Migraine disease' to make it clearer they are not talking about a single attack. 

And increasingly people with migraine are getting more comfortable talking about migraine as a disability and a form of neurodiversity. 

These are very big shifts, and for those of us who have been living with migraine for a long time, it's really hard to stop saying 'migraines'! 

Check out the Migraine Australia Language Guide

A migraine literacy revolution

With this really radical shift in the understanding of what migraine is, comes an equally exciting explosion in people with migraine learning about and really understanding their condition for the first time. 

One of the most fundamental ways that the understanding of migraine has shifted is that we now understand it is always there. 

So we don't have migraine because we didn't drink enough water or get enough sleep, or because we eat too much sugar or not enough meat, or anything else. The only way you get migraine is being born with it. 

Now that it is known and understood that migraine is not just a headache - that's just phase three of a five part attack cycle - we are getting better and recognising the symptoms and understand the full impact of migraine. 

Symptoms that were previously dismissed or ignored because it wasn't a headache are now being recognised and managed as part of migraine. 

Migraine does change over the course of our lives, often beginning with colic in babies or car sickness in little kids, then revealing itself more clearly in puberty or early adulthood. For women in particular it becomes debilitating in peak reproductive years, goes absolutely haywire in perimenopause, and settles a little post-menopause. Men often have a harder time in puberty and later in life. The migraine revolution is allowing us to understand these different presentations and symptoms, so we can begin to manage them for the first time.

Neuroscientists are also increasingly understanding that the migraine brain functions differently in the interictal phase - between attacks - and not necessarily in bad ways. 

A workforce revolution

The hyper-reactive migraine brain has been found to think faster and learn faster than a neurotypical brain, which means that children with migraine, if not significantly affected by symptoms earlier in life, generally do well in school and often go on to tertiary education. 

And then, towards the end of their degree in the most common of cases, migraine rears its ugly head, and people living with migraine have - until now - had their careers stolen from them before they can really begin. 

Many of the people who are sidelined by migraine are young, intelligent, capable, highly educated people. As a result of the migraine revolution and with the help of the life changing new medications, there is hope for around 500,000 people unable to work at all, or in their normal role, because of migraine.

The hundreds of thousands of people with migraine we believe can be put back into the workforce if we give migraine a break are trained nurses going back on the ward, teachers back in classrooms, accountants and lawyers back in their firms, scientists back in labs, and business leaders back in boardrooms. 

We have the tools right now to put half a million workers back into the workforce. And millions more with lower rates of absenteeism and presenteeism. 

The migraine revolution is currently changing out lives, but it could be changing the world. We just need to give migraine a break.