After my most recent migraine, this weekend and the 3rd in 4 months, I’ve begun to try and figure out why I get them and what I can do to prevent or lessen them. I knew that stress could be a trigger, but didn’t realize that food could be as well. After reading this article from Webmd, I believe I ODd on hot dogs… :dubious: heh…
So, I ask you, fellow migraine sufferers, can you tell when one is coming on, what do you do to lessen the pain, how long do they last, and what do you do to decrease their frequency?
As for me, I can tell one is coming when I see spots or shapes of light floating in front of my eyes. Page two of the above linked article calls them “auras.”
To lessen the pain, there isn’t much I can do except hide in a dark, quiet space and sleep for as long as possible. Sometimes, one of my wife’s good hard neck and shoulder massages helps.
Mine usually last 2-3 days. Day 1 - I feel like a nuclear bomb has gone off in my head. Day 2 – Mostly the pain is gone, but my head feels cloudy on the inside. Day 3 – Much better, just a little bit of cloudiness.
The frequency of my migraines has been increasing, used to only be 1 or 2 a year, now it seems like 1 a month. HELP!!!
I get them very occasionally - will go several years between having them, then I’ll have a few over the course of several months. Since they’re so rare, I don’t keep Imitrex or whatever around the house.
I think mine are on the milder side, but they are preceded by an aura involving visual disturbances. Usually a half hour before the pain starts. The aura is either tunnel vision (can’t see things in the left / lower part of my visual field; the first time that happened I remember looking at someone, thinking “my god, that woman has only 1 arm” then realizing she had 2, I simply couldn’t see both at the same time), or a flickering spot in the middle of my vision which looks like the pixels in that part suddenly started sparkling. Sometimes it just manifests itself as an inability to read in the middle part of my vision - I can still manage to read, slowly, but by looking at things off-center and inferring half the letters.
Since mine are relatively minor, if I can down a bowlful (kidding! just 800 mg) of Advil, that usually tones down the ache; if I’m at home I’ll usually try to sleep for a couple of hours. Then usually the pain is gone, or at a very low level. If I don’t manage the nap, or don’t gulp down the Advil in time, I feel like crap for 24 hours or more. Residual headache, very draggy…
No clue what if anything my triggers are so I can’t really avoid them.
The older I get, the longer the time between headaches. I think they peaked in my mid-thirties. I never saw any aura, but would know one was coming if I just wasn’t hungry. If I ate anyway, it felt like my digestive system was saying “what is this stuff?”
They generally lasted a day, and I felt wrung out the next day. Once one was on, I’d hide in the dark and sleep, alternating with hot showers, sometimes in my clothes if it was raging by the time I was able to get home. Oh, and if I threw up, I knew it was halfway over.
I was eventually able to keep them mostly away, or at least spread them out, with chronic low doses of caffiene. I mostly used sodas, but kept no-doz around just in case.
Mine seem to be mostly weather-related and, if I don’t wake up with one, it’s probably not going to happen. If it does, Advil, pseudoephedrine (the real stuff) and caffeine, combined with 20 minutes in a dark room seem to work well enough. I have gotten auras a couple of times this year and only ended up with a headache once. That corresponded with the sudden onset of a big, fast-moving storm front.
Unfortunately, my daughter seems to have inherited the tendency.
I tend to get migraines due to prolonged periods of bad sleep - I can do 6 or 4 hours nights a few times a week, but 3 or 4 in a row usually brings on a migraine. I think this is where the majority of my migraines now come from, so I try my best to get my rest (sometimes this doesn’t work out too well around finals.)
I peaked around 14-16 years of age; that whole period was like a long migraine. I was on Inderal and Cafergot, which were almost as bad as the migraines. I took wholistic measures as well - feverfew tea as a preventative, which is the only one I remember because it tasted nasty. The Inderal was the worst - it’s used to treat high blood pressure as its primary function, which isn’t so hot for someone with low blood pressure such as myself. I was always falling asleep in class. The Cafergot was a whole Pit thread unto itself. That shit was loathesome.
Now I can usually quaff 4-6 Excedrin and recover, although I get the rare migraine-that-won’t quit once or twice a year. Usually I retreat to my bedroom and tough it out for a few days. I’m thankful it’s not more often now.
Like Mamma Zappa, I tend to get them infrequently and not too severely. Usually but not always I get the visual disturbances at the start. I’ve had a few - maybe 3-5 - migraines in my life that were so bad, I truly wanted to die from the pain and nausea.
I’ve also gone through migraine “phases” where I got moderately bad migraines 2-3 times/week. When that happened, I went on a daily regime of Inderal. That always helped, and after a few months or maybe a year I’d gradually wean myself off the drug and the migraines wouldn’t come back.
Red Wine (one glass is fine, I usually don’t risk the second one.)
Dark Chocolate (again, a bite or two is fine, a binge is not.) Milk chocolate is okay though.
Irregular sleep.
I also respond to weather-changes, but not consistently.
I don’t get the “auras” or visual disturbances. Sometimes I get a “heaviness” in the head that tells me one is on the way, sometimes as early as the night before.
The only thing I’ve ever known that triggers them for me is strenuous exercise after lack of sleep - but even that isn’t a guarantee. Otherwise, they just happen randomly, usually in clusters over the course of several days.
The majority of them don’t actually produce head pain, but just leave me weak and feeble and upset after the visual disturbance has gone. I do sometimes get a mild ache in one side of my head if I cough for a couple of days before I get an attack, as a warning that I’m entering a phase.
When they do go full blown, however, I am crippled for about 24 hours, and it’s sheer bloody agony. All I can do is chug painkillers and lie down and cry.
Once I start getting the aura all I can do is hope that it goes away of its own accord, or that it isn’t accompanied by the headache. There’s nothing I know of that can mitigate an attack.
A few years ago I did a little animation of a typical aura for me. You might identify.
I usually get migraines during my period, or if my head heats up for some reason (overdid exercising / exposure to sun without a hat), or if I don’t drink enough during the day and get dehydrated. Also, if I get a regular headache and don’t treat it with Advil or ibuprofen immediately, it will always develop into a full-blown migraine. In this context, btw, I’ve noted, that non-migraine sufferers often criticize me for taking medicine for a mere mild headache. “You should just tough it out,” they usually say. A - why would you care about what medicine others take? and B - why should you NOT take medicine for a headache? I’ve never understood the rationale for suffering in silence if you have something available that makes the pain go away.
Anyhow, once I have the full-blown migraine, Advil or ibuprofen won’t work anymore, and I have to take Aspirin, which makes me throw up. Then I take another Aspirin, repeat ad nauseam (pun intended) until the migraine subsides. Actually, it usually means that I do not have the migraine pain anymore, but I still have the feeling that the headache is sitting in my head behind the Aspirin wall, just waiting to come out. A dark room, no sensoric stimulation (especially sound) whatsoever, and low temperatures help make the migraine go away completely. Then, I feel woozy for a day until I’m fine again.
However, recently I’ve discovered a migraine medicine called “Formigran” which contains Naratriptan - really helped me without all the queasiness and wooziness.
Oh, and I’ve inherited the migraine from my Mom. Interestingly, Mom and I both swear by caffeinated drinks during a migraine phase. We only differ in one approach: She swears by drinking Diet Coke, while I find that aspartame makes me even more queasy, and will only drink regular Coke.
My brother discovered after years of awful migraines that anything containing MSG would generally lead to a migraine.
He goes for very long periods of time now without one. He used to get them so severely as a teenager that he’d black out; I’m not sure if getting older has helped, or if he has just learned his triggers. (He’s 32 now.)
You’re lucky, you get auras. The very moment you notice an aura you need to start taking Tylenol or Advil or something for the pain. The best thing you can get IMHO is imitrex. As soon as you get the aura you take the imitrex, you probably won’t even get the headache, imitrex works so fast it’s scary.
I rarely get them now because I avoid stuff that triggers them. Usually mine start as a sinus headache that immediately triggers a muscle tension headache at the base of the scull. I can feel a migraine as a weird sickly headache that’s not painful to start with. When I recognize this I have about 15 minutes to do something about it (or I’m screwed). After much experimentation I use over the counter drugs to deal with it along with a number of other techniques. Interestingly, if I start to get one when sleeping my dreams become very violent and I’ve learned to recognize this and wake up.
I would suggest going to a doctor and getting a prescription for one of the meds used for migraines. There is no reason to suffer through such a horrible headache.
That’s more or less what I do. I used to get them more frequently but now it’s only once or twice a year. In fact, I just had one the day before yesterday. I get the aura, I pop three Advil or so and just sit and wait. Usually, the aura goes away after 45 or so minutes and if I managed to get the Advil in time, no headache appears. I feel pretty lucky over that one.
What do you do to lessen the pain?
Excedrin migraine if I catch it early enough but it really doesn’t do much at all. Usually I curl up in a dark room and try to sleep or bitch at everyone around me (if I’m miserable, dammit, everyone else will be too!) I also throw up a lot from the pain. At one point my Doc had prescribed heavy duty narcotic pain relievers - I stopped taking them. I don’t like the adds for addiction. Besides, I LIKE bitching.
How long do they last?
Until the storm starts and/or the barometric pressure changes.
What do you do to decrease their frequency?
Nothing I can do. Can’t take imitrex - have had heart problems in the past so Doc says I shouldn’t.
My son seems to have started getting them - I feel so bad for him.
If you have advance warning, you’re lucky; there are medications that will stop one cold if you know its coming. You didn’t mention how old you are and that might be a factor; also, do you have a high stress job?
Mine nearly always wake me up around 2:30 AM and they are nearly fully developed by then. They start behind the right eye and expand to encompass the entire right hemisphere of my head. About thirty minutes after I wake up, I have to vomit and once that is out of the way, I can begin taking dope; Fiorinal #3 usually does it for me; if it doesn’t, its off to the ER for a shot of Demerol. In the meantime, a very dark room, absolute quiet and an ice bag are absolutely required. Sometimes, a very hot shower with the water pounding on the back of my head helps; I just seem to sense when that will be helpful and when it won’t.
Mine seem to be tied to hunger, or lack of sleep, or rough red wine, or stress but those are not guaranteed to bring one on; sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.
In any event, see a doctor and describe your symptoms as accurately as you can. Help is out there but sometimes you have to put in a lot of effort to find it. Remember, migraine sufferers can empathize with you; others will probably scoff. I used to say I wouldn’t wish a migraine on my worst enemy but now I wish I could inflict one on anyone who belittles the pain.
My migraines didn’t start until after the birth of my second child in my late 30s. At first I got them sometimes twice weekly, always late in the afternoon. Over the counter pain killers tended to make them worse and other tricks that work for other people like hot showers, migraine sticks, massage and caffeine did nothing for me at all. I’d have to shut myself in a dark room for 24 hours often throwing up.
Now I’m on a preventative which has lessened the severity of the migraine. I will go through periods of having one a week for months then for no reason I will go for a couple of months without one at all. Now when I feel one coming on I take Imigran Nasal Spray which gives relief within 15 minutes and will last for 24 hours. By that time the pain is bearable but feel rather foggy for another two days.
I have many triggers, weather, barometric pressure, lack of sleep, overdoing things, looking at bright light even looking out of a window can do it, chocolate, wine both red and white and I suspect any number of other things.
How do I know when one is coming on? I often feel quite ill for 24 hours beforehand then I’ll get a pain in my left eye and back of my neck. Occasionally I’ll see bright zig-zag lines but not always.
Similar here. It took me many years to realize that the horrible pain in the back of my neck and mid-shoulder wasn’t a muscle spasm, but a migraine. I don’t have the sick feeling beforehand, though.
Sometimes I get an aura. Usually it takes the form of a twinkling arch made of zigzag lines. It starts small and gets larger and larger until it disappears (imagine driving toward a bridge, then driving under the bridge). The aura usually lasts 15 - 20 minutes. At its peak, I can’t really see anything on the left side of my visual field - everything over there is a gray fog or a kind of visual gibberish.
I don’t always get a headache after an aura. I don’t always get an aura with a headache. I’ve had migraines since I was a small child (8 years old, maybe younger), but I didn’t have an aura until I was around 30. I had a lot of migraines in my late teens, and then none at all for several years when I started taking exogenous testosterone. The headaches came back full blast in my mid-20’s.
I take Relpax and it’s very effective. Zomig worked as well, but it leaves me feeling like the rest of my body has been beaten with a stick (my head feels fine, though!). Lately I’ve been trying to see if there’s a combination or quantity of OTC meds that has any effect if I take it early enough, but so far I haven’t had much luck. OTC meds don’t even touch the migraine once the characteristic headache has set in.
I’m guessing from your user-name that you’re a guy, so my “hormone-induced” issue probably is not yours. Since I stopped taking birth-control, my have lessened from one or two a MONTH to one or two a YEAR. Mine seem to be mostly weather or stress related. I take Excedrin at the first sign of one, or else a strong dose of ibuprofen. And try to go sleep. I used to take Imitrex, but I don’t need it now.
