Migraines

[ziva16]

I am talking about migraines.  I am not talking about headaches, long-lasting headaches, or even extra painful headaches.  I get actual migraines, and they are absolutely miserable.  Thankfully, I have found a wonderful neurologist who has been able to prescribe me some live-saving medicine.  I am curious to know if anybody, who has or have had chronic migraines, has ever found a trigger?  "They" say we do not know what causes migraines, but there are obviously going to be some triggers.  I've attempted every type of diet there is to find out if certain foods trigger mine, but I just cannot seem to find any correlation.

 

Also, it is so terrible when I have to leave work because of a migraine.  People who do not get them think that it's "just a headache" and I just want to get out of work, when that is furthest from the case!

[Medusaz'Army]

I understand your pain Ziva16.  Migraines are such a severe agony they will stop a person dead in their tracks.  Most of the time pain reliever or prescribed medications won't help relieve the pain.  My trigger is activated when I don't eat enough sugar.  The severe hurt is so bad that I go blind in one eye.  A good remedy is to simply go into a pitch black dark room with no sounds whatsoever until you are calm enough and the vice is lifted from your head.

[BaviSarah]

Migraines are NOT fun. I suffered from chronic migraines for almost a year. 25 days a month of hell. Fortunately my neurologist was into finding the triggers before putting me on lots of long term meds. For me its being dehydrated, or tired. I try to manage both of those states, but when i don't, at least i know what caused it. I also take a supplement of magnesium and riboflavin (B2) which has been amazing in reducing my migraines back to an occasional level. Not sure what you take when you get a migraine, but try a number of drugs if you have to, and make sure you get the one that gives you relief. Sounds obvious but specific tablets work for me but the nasal spray version of same drug doesn't.

 

[Isaacberts]

Migraines have been in my family for generations. All the women, no men, suffer from them. I've been on beta-blockers for years and tried so many drugs...I can't even keep track of them all anymore. My triggers are too much sun, stress and salt.

 

Recently someone told me about this pressure point on your ear that helps with them? She said if you get a piercing there, it's supposed to keep them at bay...but I'm skeptical. Anyone try this or know someone who has? 

[alboe]

I too experience migraines so I understand all of your (literal) pain. The best thing that works for me is making sure I have enough food and water in my body and then going and trying to sleep it off. Make sure you are in a pitch dark room, as has been mentioned. 

[slavica damnjanović]

I think Ashtanga Yoga could help, it will strength your energy and calm your mind, bring you in another state of beingness You must try!.

[BillyDee]

Isaacberts, I too have heard of the suggested piercing in the ear. The process is akin to acupressure which has had a good deal of success in many areas so I am hopeful that research proves it's worth.

Although my migraines only come once every couple of months, the physical pain is intense, and of course since no medication relieves the pain, there is also the hopelessness of having to bear with it until relief comes naturally. The other main effect on me is the tiredness afterwards and the inability to do anything other than sleep it off.

My triggers do seem to fit the usual suspects - coffee, chocolate, alcohol, bright lights...but then sometimes I can have these with no ill effects. It does seem strange that with so many medical advances, this remains an area of such mystery.

 

[Kayla]

I've heard it said that there are only two kinds of pain worse than migraines: concentration-camp torture, and childbirth. Back when I used to get migraines, I was completely incapacitated for their duration.

Like "ziva16" and "BaviSarah" above, I also consulted neurologists, but the prescription drugs they gave me hurt more than helped. Every single one of them added nausea and vomiting to the agonizing pain.

There was one thing, though, that did help: Ice... especially ice applied to the back of the neck where the blood can get cooled down before it reaches the top of your head and the back of your eyes. A quiet, pitch-black room like "Medusaz'Army" above recommends, together with an ice pack, can also be helpful, as can drinking a big glass of warm water with a tablespoon of natural apple-cider vinegar before you lie down, to counter dehydration.

TIP:

This trick of adding natural apple-cider vinegar to warm water was so effective for me that I began drinking it *before* I got migraines. The more of it I drank, the fewer migraines I got. This led me to wonder if an acid/alkaline imbalance might be at the bottom of my troubles, so I got a little roll of nitrazine paper from the pharmacist in order to test my urine first thing every morning.

What I found was that it was *way* too alkaline. Although the apple-cider vinegar did bring it back a little more toward the normal pH range, I was having to drink lots of tablespoons of it to achieve that result. So I had the happy thought of getting some hydrochloric-acid capsules from the health-food store and having one about 10 minutes before each meal... and wow! I snapped back from too alkaline to normal almost overnight!

From that day to this, I have never had another migraine, and I tell every woman I meet who suffers from them about how to use the nitrazine paper as a tool to keep within the normal pH range and out of the clutches of migraines forever.

Note 1:

While hydrochloric-acid capsules before meals will correct alkalinity much faster than a tablespoon of apple-cider vinegar in a glass of warm water, it's best to use the HCL capsules for just long enough to coax your body into producing sufficient HCL on its own. After that, you can maintain a normal pH with daily doses of natural apple-cider vinegar, supplementing from time to time with an occasional HCL capsule as needed to stay in the normal range.

What I discovered is that higher stress equaled higher alkalinity, so I started looking for ways to reduce stress even as I continued testing and correcting the pH of my urine. Eventually, I got to where I didn’t have to test anymore because I’d been doing it for so long that I “knew” how it felt, physically, when I was out of balance, pH-wise, and I’d take action immediately to get back into balance.

Note 2:

I feel obliged to mention that, when I told my neurologist of this solution, he laughed. He said that it's the pH of my bloodstream that matters, not the pH of my urine, and that my body will naturally keep my bloodstream at the proper pH. I'm sure that's true... but it's also true that I've been migraine-free ever since I started testing and correcting and staying in the normal zone, pH-wise, so the upshot is... I never went back to him.

I hope this helps.

 

[HCT007]

I don't have much too to add here, as there have already been some great posts and a wide range of experiences showing how differently each person copes with and gets some form of relief from their migraines. Kayla's post above is particularly brilliant as it illustrates how one can start doing their own research, come across a key piece of information that resonates and keep following up and following on with it to discover the relief that works for them.

I would add researching "trigger points" in Google especially relating to migraines, a modality that most remedial massage therapists as well as chiropractors and osteopaths that specialise in soft tissue bodywork practice are trained in. Trigger points is a body of medical research work initially instigated and developed by Dr Janet Travell, who was President John F Kennedy's own personal physician. A trigger point is a minute nodule of permanently contracted muscle fibres that when aggravated causes a predicable pain referral pattern to occur and be perceived. It is these predictable pain referral patterns that are the wonderful thing about trigger points that can bring about permanent relief to people who have had on-going and sometime unrelenting pain situation which are non detectable in neurological, MRI and CT scans.

It is nonetheless important to mitigate the mental and emotional triggers too, as well as clearing the physical body related triggers, as often times migraines have a mental / emotional basis from which they originated from.

[Palimpsest]

I wish my headaches had a trigger that I could control. Mine seem to be brought on by certain weather patterns, but least they don't seem quite as severe as other people's, and I'm lucky that most of the time I can keep the pain at a dull roar if I take enough over-the-counter headache medicine.