I suffered full-blown migraines throughout my childhood and into my early twenties. “Mommy, my eyes hurt.” were the words that preceded two days in the dark with pounding pain and nausea.
At some point in my early twenties I read an article about food triggers. I tested various things on the list and discovered that Romano cheese was causing my headaches. I recalled that my first migraine, when I four or five years old, was when Bertha the babysitter fed us kids our first pizza. The headaches always involved eating out; Mom never used it at home. Whenever we were getting ready for a family outing my little brother would say “Now don’t get excited.”, because the doctor had said the headaches were caused by over-stimulation of my sensitive disposition.
I now avoid Romano, always asking in Italian restaurants if the food I’m ordering has it and reading labels on packaged food carefully. The only times I’ve had a migraine in over 40 years is when some Romano cheese sneaks into me; it only takes a tiny amount.
Thanks so much for the information! My son is seeing a neurologist. I don’t know if the neurologist specializes in migraines, but he treats a lo of them. I’ll ask my son and will also ask him about the DHE.
My Mom USED to get them. Triggered by bright light. We finally convinced her to try ‘alternative’ medicine. When she feels one coming on, she will put a few drops of CBD (not THC but marijuana)oil under her tongue and it stops it in its tracks. No migraine, no headache, nothing. Been a lifesaver for her. She’s 88 years old.
CBD doesn’t work for me, but smoking weed daily has dramatically cut the frequency and severity of my migraines. It’s illegal where I live, so difficult to get. I’m running out now and feeling worried as my usual guy is out with nothing in sight. I can go circa ten days before my weekly/bi-weekly migraines return. Without it, I get at least one migraine a week lasting a day or more. With the weed, it’s maybe once every month or two and never lasts more than half a day. Last time I was out I fell into a status migraine that went on for over a week. Hellish. I seriously wanted to drill holes in my head, especially one spot between my eyebrows.
I started experiencing auras without pain when I was nine, full migraine following a couple of years later. The only time in my life I’ve not suffered chronic migraine is when on vacation (I suffer barometric migraines and live in a very changeable climate) and while pregnant, nine months migraine-free, bliss. I’m in pre-menopause now and am cautiously hopeful that my hormonal migraines will end. It’s the primary reason I can’t take HRT for my menopause symptoms, as any type of hormonal treatment has always meant instant migraine.
Amitriptyline helped but even the smallest dose would make me so sleepy I would drop into random naps for an hour or two without realising, this while my daughter was a toddler. Nothing else has ever really touched my migraines, and I get horrible medication headaches from painkillers if I can’t get the migraine to quit after a day or two, so have to try not to use them often. Low dose codeine is available OTC here, I keep that for when nothing else is working and I’m desperate for it to stop.
Downing three diet cokes in fast succession helps settle it enough so I can function until I can get to a dark room to lie down. I am very excited to try the brain freeze method. VERY. EXCITED.
I had these for years before I knew what they were. I thought it was some kind of eye strain, until my doctor told me that what I was describing was a classic migraine aura.
That said, the headaches that follow the aura have never been that bad for me. When I see the first little squib in my vision, I know I’ve got 20 - 30 minutes before the headache kicks and I have plenty of time to take Ibuprofen, which is enough to take care of them. But I haven’t had one of those types of migraines in nearly a year.
The ones I have that are really bad–the ones my doctor gave me Relpax for, seem to come on in the night; I wake up with a pain behind my eyes and in my left temple, and serious tension in the muscles of the back of my neck. And then it got worse during the day. Before the Relpax, Aleve was the only thing that would relieve the migraine at all, and even then it could take hours before I felt better.
I didn’t feel one of these bad headaches coming on between last October and February, but lately they’ve been coming every week or two, and once two days in a row. I get 4 Relpax a month and had a good supply built up when I wasn’t taking any, but that’s been dented with this recent, more frequent, usage.
Any recommendations on a brand of CBD oil? I looked into it a while back and it seems that a lot of it isn’t totally what it claims to be, and I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on the wrong thing.
If all that diet coke works, I’d be willing to bet it’s the caffeine. You can get caffeine pills and try taking one of them (or even Excedrin or one of the “Tension” type meds that have caffeine in them.
I have Fioricet, it’s Tylenol, Caffeine and butalbital. The Tylenol and caffeine help with the headache and the barbiturate to pull some of the stress out of your neck and shoulders.
Regarding the brain freeze, I’ve brought that up a few times. It works well enough that I’ll use it as one of my options, but it’s certainly not 100%. If anyone tries that and it doesn’t work, keep in mind that it’s possible it just didn’t work that time.
Oddly, an ice pack on my head does exactly nothing other than make my head cold. I don’t even know why I bother with the ice pack thing. I think I only do it when I’m in really bad shape and I don’t know what else to do.
This thread is really interesting. I guess I’ll share my experiences.
I don’t remember when I got my first migraine but I do remember that they got worse after my first concussion, in the fifth grade. I would get headaches with severe light sensitivity and nausea about once every two weeks and always at school. I would ask to go to the nurse, the nurse would let me lay down. When I threw up, she’d call my mom and my mom would come pick me up. My mom was getting really frustrated with me and thought I was faking it. I just knew I was in a lot of pain, a lot of the time, and that I really hated throwing up. I can’t remember how we treated them because I was a kid and I was non functional while it was happening.
A few years later, in the 8th grade, I got another concussion. And, for some reason, that made the migraines go from once every two weeks to maybe once every 6 months.
I’m not sure if tramatic brain injury is the best way to treat migraines but it sort of worked for me? (I really don’t recommend concussions. It’s just a think that happened to me. They really hurt and I was really sick because of them.)
Nowadays, migraines for me are relatively mild and really infrequent. I can’t read or focus when I have one but I don’t feel like all the lights are trying to kill me and they don’t make me throw up anymore. I mostly treat them with ibuprofen and caffeine at the first signs, blurry vision and the starts of the auras or the slightest twinge in my head.
It was first grade for me. At least once a week I was down in the nurses office (sometimes throwing up) waiting for my mom to get there. These were debilitating, every one of them. She’d get there, I’d hobble out to the car, get home, throw up and go to sleep for about three hours. Then I’d wake up feeling much better but having no idea if it was later that night or the next morning. It always took about 20 minutes to get my bearings strait.
I don’t know that anyone really likes throwing up, and the act of doing it would make my head throb even more, but I almost always felt better afterwards, like it took some of the pressure off my belly.
When these first started, my doc told my mom that at puberty they’d either get worse or better. Mine got better. They slowed down over the course of high school and college. As of now, the really bad ones, the ones that I don’t even want to move while laying in bed because it makes the pain worse only happen a few times a year instead of once a week.
Interestingly, light never bothered me that much. However in recent years noise will start to irritate me in the hour or two before a migraine kicks in. When I start to be able to hone in on every conversation in the workplace, every click of a keyboard, every foot step and feel myself wanting to yell ‘shut the fuck up, why are you all being so loud’, I know that I need to take something.
I just came off a three-day migraine festival. I’ve had the same type of headache since I was eight-years-old or so.
I get “stabbing icepick through the right eye socket/sinus” headaches, I’ve never experienced one on the left. Sometimes they correlate with barometric pressure changes, often with PMS hormonal fluctuations, and at times for no identifiable reason. There are some effective RXs I’ve taken, but I got lazy and didn’t re-up before this latest attack (plus I despise my GP – we need to change, but I’ve been lazy about it). I had sinus surgery a few years ago and it did fuckall for my headaches.
I don’t have classic-type auras (seeing colors, etc) but I do know, right away, when the first twinge comes if it’s a short-term “just live with it for a few hours” headache or a whopper like it was these last few days. These are my ameliorative attempts:
-Take RX (when I have it)
-Take Benadryl
-Nose spray in both nostrils and stuff big hunks of paper towels both snoutholes
-Shove an earplug into my right ear
-Put a piping-hot heating pad on back of my head
-Put an icepack over my eye area
-Lay down, but propped up (the flatter I am, the worse the stabbing pounding)
I’ll share my experiences too. Mine started in college. If they started earlier, I don’t remember them specifically, and they certainly weren’t ever identified as migraines. In college our health center was legendary for being terrible, so when I went in and told them I was having pain behind my right high, they pulled out the bright lights and examined my eyes. No diagnosis. They continued infrequently until I got pregnant 15 years later, then they started happening several days a month. Frequency just kept upping from there. Then we moved to Missouri, home of huge barometric swings, and in the Fall of 2012 I started having them every day. Initially, thanks to an understanding boss, and some early success with treatments, I was able to keep working. The headaches kept getting worse, however. By 2015, I had to go on disability. By 2016, I was on permanent disability.
Some days are better than others, but I have a headache every day. A good day is a 5, a middling day is 7, and the others are 9-10. My hands and face tingle. I get dizzy. The tinnitus is so loud I have trouble hearing other people speak. Noises translate directly into pain. I have trouble speaking (making my mouth form words). I have trouble finding the right words. My eye sight gets blurred. I get very, very nauseous but I rarely throw up. I’d love to throw up actually, because the few times I have I felt better afterwards.
In the several years I have wrestled with this, I have worked my way through several neurologists and a wide variety of treatments. If my experiences can help anyone, I am happy to contribute. I’ll try to answer any questions that are posted if I have relevant information.
My top-line advice to anyone who deals with migraines on a regular basis is to find a neurologist who deals with migraines. Most PCPs and GPs don’t know enough to help you. Many neurologists don’t either.
If you use Ambivalid’s Chill method, it may mean that one of the available nasal treatments would work for you. My theory is that if the cold is temporarily numbing facial nerves and giving you some relief, then you may be able to find relief from other remedies that pass close to those nerves. The most promising, I think, is a numbing spray that is used about once per month. Here is an older article about it.
Here is an article that looks at other types of nasal sprays: triptans, DHE, and Torodol.
On May 18, the FDA is expected to approve the first of several anti-cgrp drugs for the treatment of episodic and chronic migraines. These drugs are a new type of approach to migraine.
This class of drugs has promising test results (depending on how you look at things) with 33-50% reduction in headache days. Test results are not the only reason that researchers and people like me are excited about these drugs, however. These drugs represent the first time that scientists have taken research about how migraines work and used that information to create drugs specifically for migraines. Prior to this they have taken drugs for other uses, such as epilepsy, and tried them to see if they work. If they work, they try similar drugs.
After this class of drugs, the next type of drug is likely to be anti-PAC[sub]1[/sub]. Pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) has been linked with both migraine and cluster headache, and it binds to PAC[sub]1[/sub] receptor. Blocking the receptor could help with the pain of migraine and cluster headaches.
I’ll post another update on May 18. Hopefully the first approval will come through.
Wow, now I don’t feel like I have a thing to complain about–I can’t imagine what life is like when someone has daily migraines.
I get them once every three or four months, but there was an odd uptick in March/April, with one a week or so. I had the same uptick last spring as well.
So I spend my sunny evenings avoiding the western sunlight streaming in my windows, for fear of triggering one…or not. I never can pinpoint what sets one off.
When the fuzzy vision starts, I take a Relpax. It’s always a mystery about that, if it really does anything–I always think “but imagine what it would have felt like had I not taken that pill,” but there is no way to know. But, any port in a storm, and I haven’t had the full-on nausea version in quite a while.
I would recommend that all fellow sufferers educate the young folks around you. I am forever thankful to my boss when I was 17 who told me about the first time he had a migraine and described the symptoms. It’s nice to know that there is a common ailment that can make half of your body temporarily go numb, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you are having a stroke.
They may return. I get them periodically, and have for some years now. The last one, even though I knew what it was, actually scared me. It was about three years ago, but in addition to the aura, I experienced aphasia, which is impaired speech. I thought I was having some sort of TIA and went to the ER. Turned out not to be the case. I usually get a low-grade headache following an ocular migraine, so have learned to take a couple of aspirin at the onset.
I don’t get them nearly as much as I did when I was in my 20’s…used to get a large migraine every month or so (which would completely disable me for at least a day if not two). These days it’s maybe once a year. No idea if they still even prescribe it, but I used to get the Imitrex shots (I could only use the oral version if I caught it before I started violently throwing up once the migraine set in). I’m sure there are newer/better drugs today, but those shots were a life saver for me at the time.
Maybe this is too obvious but have you tracked pollen levels? Or maybe a sudden spike in UV levels? That would be my first guess for stuff that increases in Spring. Sometimes people get focussed on what they ate or did and forget about environment stuff.
I have been hoping that it is exactly this. Not only do pollen levels increase in springtime, but I do as much running outdoors as I can, so it makes sense that things would spike in springtime, and I hope that’s it. By the time summer rolls around I’m running at the gym (sticky hot weather) and the pollen has calmed down.
But isn’t part of the joy of migraines the never-ending quest to pin down exactly what triggers them?
Yes, it is. Triggers can be all kinds of things, including exercise. Just the fact that you suddenly start running a lot more in Spring could be what does it. You might talk to your doctor about taking a preventative just in in April if this is an annual pattern. Might as well.
Quick update to let everyone know that Aimovig, the first of the anti-cgrp drugs, has been approved by the FDA. If you’re interested in trying it, now is the time to contact your neurologist.
