(Rachel Lau/ CTV News) — Working women get more migraines than anyone else, and it’s causing irrevocable damage to their lives, according to Dr. Elizabeth Leroux, a headache neurologist and the chair of Migraine Canada.
“The research is very clear that it is a condition that affects three to four women for one man,” she explains. “It [starts] in childhood. It’s 10 per cent of little children, and then once puberty arrives, the women start having more of it. So, migraine really affects people between 10 to 15 [years old] and then up to 50 [years old].”
It is an extremely prevalent neurological disease that impacts one in seven people in the world, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Leroux notes that the number changes to one in 10 to 15 for severe cases, and two to four per cent of the population live with it chronically.
Despite years of research, she argues there is a stigma against migraine sufferers, with many people brushing it off as “just a headache.” (…)