Migraine Attacks

About 1 out of 8 people has migraines. They usually begin during the teenage years. After puberty, migraines are more likely to attacks girls and women. Experts still aren't sure what causes these headaches. But they seem to involve a wave of unusual activity in brain nerve cells, along with changes in blood flow in the brain.

Though migraines can trigger severe pain in the head, they aren't simply headaches. They often also cause other uncomfortable symptoms, such as: 

• Nausea 
• Vomiting 
• Unusual sensitivity to light, noises, and smells 

Nausea and Vomitting

A migraine episode can be a complicated event, with symptoms that change over hours or even days. Migraines tend to progress through several stages: 

1. Prodromal phase before the migraine 
2. Aura phase 
3. Attack phase 
4. Postdromal phase after the migraine 

Prodromal Phase: Early Warning Signs

Several hours before the migraine begins -- and sometimes even the day before -- many people with migraines notice unusual sensations. They may feel: 

• Either unusually energetic and excitable or depressed 
• Irritable 
• Thirsty 
• Cravings for certain foods 
• Sleepy, with frequent yawning 
• Need to urinate more 

Frequent Yawning

In some cases, these symptoms before the headache can help health care providers diagnose the problem as migraines.

Aura Phase: Strange Sensations Arise

About 1 in 5 people with migraine develop an "aura" that begins before the headache or starts along with it. An aura may not occur with every headache. An aura can include:

Changes in vision. 

Often visual symptoms begin first during the aura phase. During a migraine you may experience these vision changes

A flickering, jagged arc of light. 

This may take a complicated shape. It usually appears on the left or right side of your vision. Over a few minutes, it may spread in size. 

An area of vision loss. 

This problem -- combined with the flickering lights -- can make driving or focusing your eyes on small objects difficult. 

"See" images from the past or hallucinations. 

Changes in vision of Migraine Patient

These symptoms may continue to grow more severe over the next several minutes.

Skin sensations. 

This part of the aura may cause tingling or "pins and needles" sensations in the body. It may also cause numbness. These feelings often affect the face and hands but can spread out across the body. The sensations may continue to expand over the next several minutes.

Language problems. 

During the aura phase of a migraine, you may have trouble communicating with others. Symptoms may include:

• Difficulty expressing thoughts while speaking or writing 
• Trouble understanding spoken or written words 
• Confusion 
• Trouble concentrating.

Attack Phase: The Headache Begins

The attack portion of a migraine episode can last for a few hours to several days. During this phase of the migraine, the person usually wants to rest quietly and finds normal activities difficult.

The Attack of Migraine

A defining quality of migraines is their pain. The pain of a migraine: 

• Usually begins at the area above the eyes 
• Typically affects only one side of the head, but it may strike the entire head or move from one side to the other. It may also affect the lower face and the neck. 
• Tends to have a throbbing intensity 
• May throb worse during physical activity or when you lean forward 
• May get worse if you become physically active 

Other symptoms that may arise during this phase include:

• Unusual sensitivity to light, sounds, and smells 
• Light-headed and fainting
• Nausea and vomiting 

Postdromal Phase: After the Storm

Following the most severe phase of the migraine, you may not feel well for up to a day. Symptoms of this post-migraine phase may include: 

• Extreme tiredness 
• Sluggishness 
• Confusion 
• Head pain that flares up when you lean over, move quickly, or experience a rush of blood to the head 

Your overall experience with migraines may change over time. They can change in frequency or severity, and attacks may not always include all of these stages. Also, you may eventually develop the migraine aura without actually having a headache.

Feeling tired and sluggish

Making the Decision

You may want to consider medicine to prevent migraines if you: 

• Having severe pain that interferes with your life despite treatment. 
• Get at least three moderate-to-severe headaches per month. 
• Take a lot of painkillers. 
• Can't get enough relief from drugs you now taking. 
• Have side effects from your headache drugs. 
• Have uncommon migraine conditions like continuing aura (blurred vision or seeing spots or wavy lines). 

If you have severe migraines, though, your doctor may suggest first trying a non-drug treatment such as biofeedback, relaxation therapy, or stress-management training. He may also recommend a preventive drug that has the lowest risk possible.

Preventive medicine might not be right for you if: 

• Your headaches are controlled by anti-inflammatory like naproxen and ibuprofen. 
• Other health conditions keep you from taking preventive drugs. 
• There could be bad interactions with other medicines you take. 
• You prefer treatments that don't involve drugs 

Talk to your doctor about your thoughts on taking preventive medications for migraines. Together, you can decide the best approach for your headache problems.

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Can an AB father and an A mother have an O baby?

Yes they can. An AB parent can indeed sometimes have an O child. But it is by no means common. In fact it would be fair to say that it is exceedingly rare. The one exception is in certain Asian groups. Some of these folks have a rare version of the ABO blood type gene called cis-AB. People with this gene version have an AB blood type but can easily have an O child.

Now I don't want you to come away thinking this is an everyday thing for most Asians. It isn't. For example, one estimate I saw stated that about 0.03% or 3 out of every 10,000 Koreans have this blood type. And that is the group where it is most common!

The next most common group is the Japanese. There it looks like about 0.001% of folks have the cis-AB allele. Or 1 out of every 100,000.

So even though it is more common for an AB parent to have an O child among the Koreans and Japanese, it still isn't that common. And it is much, much less common in other ethnic groups. Still it can and does happen. Even though your high school biology teacher said it was impossible...

ABO Calculation

Why AB Parents Rarely Have O Children
The reason why an AB parent usually does not have an O child has to do with how blood type normally works genetically. Remember, we have two copies of each of our genes – one from mom and one from dad. This is true of the blood type (or ABO) gene as well.

The ABO gene comes in three varieties: A, B, and O. Since we have two copies of this gene, that means there are six different possible combinations of these three versions. These six combinations lead to the four possible blood groups as follows:

As you can see, O is sort of like a zero. If you have an O and something else, your blood type will be that something else.

The table also shows why AB parents so rarely have an O child. Because they don't have an O to pass on!

To be O, you usually need to get an O from both mom and dad. But an AB parent usually has an A and a B version, not an O. So they usually can't have an O child. Except, of course, when they can.


Ways to Break the Blood Type Rules
There are a few ways that an AB parent can have an O child. One of the less rare ways is when the parent has the cis-AB version I was talking about earlier. These people have the following possible gene combinations:

They are all AB blood type but the middle gene combination can have an O child. Let's see how.

Imagine a dad with the middle combination of genes. He has an AB version and an O version of the ABO gene. He is AB blood type but carries the O version of the blood type gene.

How AB and A produce O Child

Now let's imagine that he has a child with a woman who has an A and an O gene. She is A blood type but like the father, also carries an O version of the ABO gene.

As you can see in the image to the right, these two parents can have an O child. In fact, every one of their children would have a 1 in 4 chance for being O.

And this is just the most common way an AB parent can have an O child. There are many other, rarer possibilities too.

ABO testing

Although I won't go into them here, we have covered a lot of them before. What I have done is listed some other possible ways an AB parent can have an O child and linked each possibility to one of our previous answers that dealt with the subject. Enjoy!

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