Pathophysiology of Migraine Headache Based on Persian Traditional Medicine

Migraine is a type of primary recurrent vascular headache that are chronic and debilitating and characterized by pulsating in the temporal area, nausea, vomiting, photophobia and phonophobia, with moderate to severe pain, and duration of headache is from 4 to 72houres.In the literatures of Persian medicine (P.M), 28 types of headache have been described such as shgaghigheh headache. This headache occurs periodically with throbbing pain in the right or/and left side. Some of the clinical features of Shaghigheh headache are highly compatible with migraine. According to the P.M. literature, it is believed that Shaghigheh most often is caused by substantial dystemperament that occurs inside the brain or internal/external membranes of the brain. Shaghigheh can generally categorize into hot and cold types. Hot shaghigheh headache is caused by hot wind and hot humors such as sanguine and bile, and cold one due to cold wind, phlegm and black bile. In the canon of medicine by Avicenna, he has divided the headache according to their bio-psychological etiology as follows:The efficient/subjective causes: The qualitative internal/external causes of heat and cold that produce headaches such as exposure to sunlight, cold weather, eating hot and spicy foods. In these cases substances have no role in the pathogenesis of the disease.Substantial causes: means biologic fluids and gases