Tweeting a killer migraine in real time
Not even the pain of a migraine headache keeps people from Twitter.
Over the course of a week, students collected every tweet that mentioned the word migraine. Once they cleared out the ads, the retweets and the metaphorical uses of the word, they had 14,028 tweets from people who described their migraine headaches in real time — with words such as “killer,” “the worst” (almost 15% of the tweets) and the F-word.
The Twitter users also reported the repercussions from their migraines: missing school or work, lost sleep, mood changes.
The researchers found the information to be “a powerful source of knowledge” about the headaches, because usually sufferers are providing information after the fact in clinical situations.
“The technology evolves, and our language evolves,” Dr. Alexandre DaSilva, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry and lead author of the study, said Wednesday by phone. Clinical researchers’ language — such as “throbbing” or “pulsating” — might not be as apt today, to “the generation that grew up with video games.”
