“We’ve never been able to figure out what’s going on with me and basically from lighter and lighter hits I’m getting concussion symptoms,” Rousey told Jim Rome (via MMA Fighting). “I lose big chunks of my vision, my depth perception and ability to think clearly. Dr. [Charles] Bernick at the Cleveland Clinic said, ‘I’ve listened to all of your symptoms, I’ve looked at all of your scans, your brain looks great.’”
“I was telling him about my history and as a kid I would get migraines all the time and epilepsy runs in my family,” Rousey explained. “Every generation of my family, someone’s had epilepsy and there’s some sort of link between epilepsy and migraines. He was saying that people that get migraines are more susceptible to getting concussions, and the more concussions I get, the easier it is to get a migraine.”
“What he thinks is happening is that I’m not actually getting a concussion every single time that this is happening,” Rousey added. “He thinks it’s setting off what’s called migraine aura where you just lose big chunks of your vision and it’s called cortical spreading depression. Where I guess your neurons get overly excited and depolarize and shut down in a wave and that’s why I lose chunks of my vision when I’m getting hit.”
“To me I was like, ‘I’m not dying! CTE isn’t coming to get me!‘ There’s actually stuff we can do about it,” Rousey said. “At first we couldn’t find any preventative migraine medication, it’s usually stuff to be used after the fact. Just recently we’ve been able to find something that I can take that’s preventative that will hopefully be able to resolve this issue for me. It’s life changing.”
But at least her migraines are under control.