Anne Donne, a neurologist at the University Hospital of Timon in Marseille, France, notes that childhood migraines are poorly understood and little discussed in the medical world. "Among adults, one in five women and one in 15 men suffer from migraines. But among children, it affects as many boys as girls before puberty," Donne told news conference held by the French organization La Voix des Migraineux (the voice of migraineurs). Migraines can begin to become more frequent in girls at the beginning of their first menstrual cycle. However, the symptoms are often mistaken for digestive disorders. "The clinical picture of the disease is one of the challenges in identifying migraines in children because the symptoms are sometimes very different from what adults experience," Donne explained. Migraines in children can be just as debilitating as those in adults. According to La Voix des Migraineux magazine, half of children with the condition have at least one attack a month, and 78 percent have moderate to severe attacks. 40% experience nausea or vomiting, and 33% experience abdominal pain. Justine Aves-Couturier, a pediatric neurologist at the University Hospital of Lille in France, told AFP that most patients who come in for counseling come around age 10, but headaches often start earlier. She stressed that a healthy lifestyle: proper nutrition, adequate sleep and physical activity are especially important for children and adolescents with migraines. Common treatments include pain relievers such as paracetamol and ibuprofen. More serious cases are prescribed triptans, drugs that make the blood vessels around the brain contract, which are thought to counteract what causes migraine, according to the U.K. National Health Service. Migraines can be triggered by many factors, but stress and fatigue are among the main culprits.