[Kim Heeyoon's Bookshelf] Migraines Don't Only Affect the Head

Kwak Taeho's "Migraine NOW"

A Medical Guide to Recognizing Pain Hidden Behind Dizziness, Toothaches, and Visual Hallucinations

"Is it normal for my head to feel this clear?"

The last sense that people with chronic illness learn is not pain, but normalcy. When someone has been unwell for too long, they may mistake a less painful day for being healthy. "Migraine NOW: Breaking the Prejudice," by neurologist Gwak Taeho, is a book that confronts this misunderstanding. It dispels the long-held notion that migraines are simply a throbbing pain on one side of the head, and reveals how often this condition hides behind different symptoms.

Migraines don’t just manifest in the head. They can present as dizziness, toothaches, nausea, or sometimes as sensitivity to light and sound, visual hallucinations, and sensory disturbances. This often leads patients to knock on the wrong doors: the ENT clinic, the dentist, the gastroenterologist, or the psychiatrist. While being told that test results are normal can feel like a blessing, for those who have been sick for a long time, it can also be another dead end.

The author is the head doctor of Bundang Riche Internal Medicine and Neurology Clinic, who has treated more than 100,000 headache patients over 25 years of clinical practice. The book opens with the real-life stories of six patients met in the clinic: someone who was bedridden by dizziness for 10 years, a patient who only received a migraine diagnosis after five dental implants, a nun in her 70s who regarded her lifelong visual hallucinations as religious experiences, and a middle school student who couldn't attend school. All were diagnosed with migraines, but it took each of them over five years on average to receive that name.

The strength of this book lies in its reassurance. Instead of instilling fear, it gives voice to patients: when the pain started, whether they were bothered by light, felt nauseous, how they slept, and how effective medications were. It introduces practical tools, such as a one-line sleep diary, questions to ask the doctor during consultations, CGRP antibodies and oral CGRP inhibitors, lasmiditan, Botox, and neurostimulators. Medical knowledge becomes distant when it is flaunted, but it becomes an ally to patients when it translates into action.

The most inconsiderate thing to say to someone in pain is, "Everyone goes through that." This book quietly refutes that idea. It emphasizes that pain is not an exaggeration but a signal, and that recurring symptoms may be a matter of diagnosis, not personality. The book shifts migraines from being pain to be endured, to a disease that can be explained, confirmed, and treated. For those who have suffered for a long time, it serves as a guide; for families who have grown weary watching from the sidelines, it becomes a much-needed interpreter.

Migraine NOW: Breaking the Prejudice | Written by Gwak Taeho | Bookk | 225 pages

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