I’m a chronic migraine headache sufferer, and have them 1-3 times a week. I’ve isolated many of the causes, including lack of sleep, too much sleep, cleaning detergent, tomatoes, nitrites (or nitrates, I forget which is the one…), etc. But so far I’ve only found one thing that helps to stop them once I get them from ways beyond my control (someone spraying the school with cleaning detergent, etc.). The only thing that fixes them for me is Excedrin PM, which is a “nighttime sleep aid and pain remover” that operates by making me drowsy. Problem is, I can’t function if my headache gets better before I go to sleep, and if it’s a minor (yet irritating) one I can’t get rid of then it’s not worth sleeping for five hours for it to end.
I’ve tried the pressure point technique, the banana-around-the-head, even acupressure. (Fellow migraine sufferers will probably be familiar with the first two) I’ve tried half a dozen daily medications.
So does anyone know any other ways to help migraines? (Once they happen, I don’t have any way to tell if I’m getting one) And do you know if any of the new medications work? E.g., Motrin Migraine and the others.
i’m with you there pal. Jello, neighbor, i’ve found that aged cheese, wines or anything with sulfates, and yes nitrates, and processed meat, help trigger them. I get them as often as you said you get them. 3 or 4 times a week. Then suddenly, if i eat mostly salads and don’t drink any alcohol, and limit my meat intake to organic only, i find i have no problems at all.
As well as the acupuncture, and pressure, and propanalol, and imitrex which i stopped taking 'cause it just makes me inoperable in every way,
i tried lavender oil on the temples, massage… all to no avail.
so i find when i have one, Excedrin for Migraines works, not the PM stuff, it doesn’t make me tired, two of them works great, and i’ve been taking Bikram Yoga, it’s a form of yoga where someone said, hey, lets take all the hardest positions and then put them together and then, lets also crank up the heat to 96 degrees F just for extra kicks. Well, this seems to help me, because it loosens up the muscles tightening up from the headache, and the pressure from the headache goes away. And its a great workout.
Hope any of that helps.
I don’t know of any empirically supported treatment for migraines. However I know that there is a strong link between them and stress. Research suggests that the onset of many migraines (though not necessarily all) come just after a stressful event has passed. Never having had problems with migraines myself, I can’t personally confirm that, but you may be able to prevent their onset by finding some outlets for stress…exercise, hobbies, etc.
stress, i don’t get stressed.
definitely not easy, and rarely if ever.
yet i still get the migraines.
so i can’t really say those studies are true to a T. Though i imagine stress pretty much is responsible for the onset of most sickness and health problems simply because of your bodies energy being diverted to all else but your immune system in some way.
if not yoga, some form of excercise might definitely help with the stress though.
Has a doctor diagnosed your headaches as migraine headaches? If you haven’t seen a doctor, I suggest that you make an appointment and go. There is a difference between stress headaches and migraines. Migraines are often ‘pounding’ and accompanied by nausea and sensitivity to light and sound. Stress headaches are more of a steady pain, and no nausea. There are a number of prescription drugs on the market (like Imitrex and Zomig) that work wonders IMHO compared to anything you can get over-the-counter. Stay away from OTC drugs like Excedrin Migraine, or others marked ‘Fast-Acting,’ because they are likely to contain caffeine, which can make your headache worse instead of better. The active ingredients in Excedrin Migraine is acetaminophen (which is Tylenol) and caffeine (which gets the acetaminophen in the bloodstream faster).
Personally, I have had great success treating my migraines with Imitrex tablets.
Hope this helps
Rose
I’m surprised Blue because i was diagnosed with migraines, bad ones too, the way it happened was i was knocked out by one while walking down the street shopping last year, and BAM! end up in the hospital for two weeks, where they did some tests and i end up getting prescribed propanalol for the blood pressure or something so that it would help break the cycle of migraines, then i get imitrex to take in case i do get a migraine, in which case, the imitrex definitely knocked out the headache, but it knocked me out as well, i couldn’t stay awake on the stuff, 50mg per pill, and there were times i had to take 2 or 3 to get rid of the pain, but the Excedrin for Migraines works wonders, and even though caffiene is bad for migraines, my doctor told me that was only if you regularly have it. Like drinking caffenaited coffee alot, or coke, regularly, then adding more caffein would just not be good, but otherwise, no problem. I felt like a zombie after taking the imitrex, couldn’t stand the stuff.
I suffer from migraines, too. I don’t get them as bad as I used to (I guess graduating from college helped a bit).
There use to be a migraine medicine called ‘Cafergot’, by Sandoz (prescription only). That stuff ruled! I would start to get a migraine, take some Cafergot, fall asleep, and wake up with the most euphoric feeling! It was awesome! I almost looked forward to getting migraines. They stopped making it about five(?) years ago. That has made my life a whole lot less happier. The euphoria associated with the Cafergot only came after a migraine, so I wasn’t addicted to it. I think their patent expired. The generics of Cafergot only make me jittery as hell. It sucks. (There is a Cafergot suppository, but I’m not sticking ANYTHING up my ***, migraine or not.) It may just be due to my body’s chemical makeup, expectations, etc.
DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE I CAN GET SOME CAFERGOT???
BTW, sex helps. I worked at Glaxo-Wellcome for a bit, and some of my co-workers confirmed this. I’m guessing that increased blood flow to other areas decreases BP in the head.
I’ve had migraines for years, mostly associated with my hormone cycle. What has helped me control them is (1) eliminating caffeine from my diet. (2) drinking strong, sweet coffee, a coke, or taking a caffeine-containing drug with something sugary as the onset of the migraine aura.
You might try that, if excedrin pm is working for you.
The caffeine withdrawl phase, when I weened myself from 4-5 cups of coffee a day, was one of the most physically miserable in my life, with many intense drug withdrawal symptoms. Strangely, when I take caffeine as as a medication, I experience no withdrawal symptoms at all.
Let’s see…Excedrin Migraine is one. It works for my mother, but not for me. Imitrex never worked, but I only tried it three times. Plus it’s extremely expensive (or it was, this was back when it first came out). Depakote (or something like that) was one of the preventative things I took. There were several others but I can’t forget the names for them. Ibuprufen gives me rebound headaches (Normal old Motrin worked for a while before that started to happen, though)
On the caffeine: I’ve heard it hurts if you take it normally, but helps once you get one. Not for me though.
Wow, Soulsling, the longest I’ve ever been in the hospital for one was a day. That was because I had a really bad one that lasted 50 hours (outside of the hospital, that is). Then they gave me a drug cocktail and I was fine.
BTW, Blue, yes, my doctor’s diagnosed them as migraines. I’ve had them for about ten years now.
My wife first started suffering from terrible migraines when she was about 25, about 5 years ago. She saw many doctors and specialists, and was prescribed just about every drug, new and old for it. Sad thing was, nothing worked. Some of those drugs provided for some rather serious and dangerous side effects. Deppression, anxiety, mood swings etc, bordering on the insane. It was really scary for awhile. Anyway, she said enough of the doctors and went to the public library. There she checked out a book, the subject of which was curing headaches without drugs (including migraines). There were all kinds of goodies in there about pressure points and massage and the like. But the thing that worked like a champ was diet. Diet, diet, diet. She changed her entire diet to what this book prescribed, and voila!, her migraines have all but disappeared. When one does come on, they are managable now, w/ OTC meds. If she were here now, I’d ask about specifics.
Point being, the medical world she saw failed to realize the best cure, was the simplest. I think it’s sad that nowadays, most doctors try to solve everything with these new fangled drugs that are everywhere.
C
After the one I had that got me in the hospital, I got on a diet that consisted of chicken, rice, lettuce, apples, and water. I didn’t have a headache for a month, which is still a record for me. Then I started adding things. That’s how I found out I was allergic to tomatoes, raspberries, strawberries, and monosodium glutamate. Then my sleeping schedule went out of whack, ending the streak and stopping my being able to figure out what caused the headaches. Here I am two years later, and I can easily figure out what causes them, just not how to get rid of them. So that’s my situation with food and all.
oh yes!!!
forgot to mention that Jello. MSG is really bad.
it’s like adding fuel to the fire for a migraine. but the diet is whats working for me too. mostly vegetables, except organic mostly, cause i’ve found that all the pesticides and sprays used help trigger the headaches too. so it’s organic vegetables and meat, no processed meats, no aged or cultured cheese, that means yogurt too, no bananas cause apparently too much potassium does it too for me, and nothing with a lot of nitrates or sulfates, hot dogs and wine…
If you don’t want the drowsiness, try the Exedrin. Caffeine can be a help to stop a migraine.
If you don’t want too much caffeine, then buy some generic aspirin (which is the same thing as Exedrin PM) and some No-Doze caffeine pills. Then, take as many aspirin as needed to quell the headache, and then only one or two caffeine pills to keep you awake.
You might want to try adding an antihistamine to this mix and see what happens. The combo of aspirin, caffeine, and antihistimine almost always stops a pressure or migraine headache for me. My antihistamine of choice is chlorpheniramine maleate (I think the brand name is something like Chlormetran).
Of course if being drowsy or sleeping or napping makes everything better, then it might be a stress headache.
I used to suffer from severe headaches about two or three times a month. My doctor did not diagnose them as migraines, nor as temporal lobe arthritis, but he did prescribe me a pain reliever which turned out to be absolutely useless. I don’t even remember what it was called.
I used to do something that helped, but that was so unscientific and probably individualistic that I hesitate to mention it. I guess you would categorize it under biofeedback. I would lie down in a dark room completely flat (no pillow under my neck), put a cool washcloth on my head, and close my eyes. I would then picture my head, in outline, like one of those old aspirin commercials. I would picture my headache as a pulsating red spot in the middle of my head. I would then picture that spot pulsating less and less, and getting less red and more blue, until it eventually “cooled down” completely. It didn’t work every time, but it worked a surprising number of times.
I don’t get them as often these days, maybe once every few months, but when I do, Excedrin Migraine knocks them right out.
Funny, I used to get migraines in middle and high school, but the medication I was given for them worked, and eventually I stopped getting them – my guess is that they stopped because of some sort of clever unconscious biofeedback solution, because I still get the auras from time to time, but the headaches themselves never make their appearance.
IIRC, I was prescribed Fiorinal to take when I began experiencing auras and Ergotamine (probably a relative of Cafergot) to take during the headaches themselves. One of the medications (I think it was the Fiorinal) was an industrial-strength analgesic; the other countered the dilation of blood vessels in the brain, which is the cause of migraine headaches. This all took place about 15 years ago, so the medications have probably changed, but I imagine that the overall treatment strategy should be pretty much the same.
Have the other posters who complain that “nothing helps” tried these medications or their current equivalents? If not, you definitely should. If so, you have my most heartfelt condolences. I would rather give birth than have another migraine.
Fiorinal didn’t help my migraines at all. It just made me feel spacey and weird and I still had the horrible pounding, debilitating headache. The thing that worked for me was Midrin, which worked like the above mentioned Ergotamine.
I have had migraines for the past 20 years (since I was 7). They begin with visual cues. I am rarely nauseated with a migraine, though I am very light and sound sensitive. If it’s mild, I can sometimes get rid of it with BC powder (or Goody’s), though I have to take 2-4 packets of the nasty stuff. If it’s a really really bad one, Midrin will usually take care of it. For the really bad ones, pain killers don’t do squat for me.
Diet has really helped the most. I no longer consume caffeine. I avoid artificial flavorings & preservatives (MSG and nitrates) & dyes. I don’t eat dairy, wheat, oats, or soy (due to my nursling’s allergies). Since I cut out the dairy and wheat, I have had one migraine and it was very manageable.
