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Migraine is more than a headache – a rethink offers hope

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Re: Migraine is more than a headache – a rethink offers hope

#191

Post by whoiswes »

dumbfounder wrote: post #68

I have been diagnosed with vestibular migraines. No pain, just dizziness and brain fog and vision issues (feels like my eyes don’t point in the same direction). I also have a doctor that says I have symptoms of mold exposure (lots of correlative testing and also house testing and remediation). I have also been diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy by my neurologist, but my mold doctor says that is consistent with mol…

Wife has been struggling with vestibular migraines for about 20 years. It really came to a head about 5 years ago, and we spent the following three years seeing specialist after specialist and trying around a dozen different medications. During this time she had daily flare-ups and missed a lot of work and spent most days in bed or on the couch.

What ended up working in the end? We finally got into Mayo, and they suggested an SSRI (at a fairly high dose). She also figured out that she has a few food triggers (yogurt and freshly baked bread are 2 bad ones). She also discovered she has double vision, and now wears prism glasses. We think the combination of double vision and whatever brain chemistry imbalance she had was "overloading" her vision and vestibular systems, and she would basically just shut down. Treating both of those seems to have (mostly) alleviated things for her.

I completely understand what you've gone though and how frustrating it is, especially given the very vague criteria for diagnosing and treating vestibular migraine.

Re: Migraine is more than a headache – a rethink offers hope

#192

Post by quackscience »

tkzed49 wrote: post #119
Aurornis wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counter-antidote: I know several people now who have experimented with psychedelics with the goal of addressing mental health issues who ended up significantly worse. One of them got stuck with a nagging feeling that the world wasn’t quite real that lasted for a very long time, which resulted in a lot of anxiety.

Depersonalization and derealization are truly awful. Having experienced them for non-psychedelic reasons, it's almost indescribable. Sometimes people say "seeing events in third person". My experience was that my consciousness and actions were completely disconnected from my observations of reality. Like, I questioned whether I had any influence at all over my existence. Basic, predictable events were suddenly uncert…

It definitely depends on the person and the state of mind they have when they go into it. I've had really overwhelming de-personalization episodes on LSD as well and they were extremely positive, life transforming experiences. I had studied and practiced Buddhism for years prior to having those experiences, though, which helped me integrate what was happening. It was like all of a sudden getting a direct experience of what was previously just words and philosophy -- "oh, this is what he was talking about."

Had I gone into it totally blind with no way to frame it it probably would have been a nightmarish scenario though. There's a reason why Right View (samyak-drishti) is the first of the 8 Noble Truths [1] and the one really emphasized in the beginning of your Buddhist practice.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_(Buddhism)

Re: Migraine is more than a headache – a rethink offers hope

#193

Post by quackscience »

tw04 wrote: post #117
jen729w wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly the same trigger here. I had one just the other day at the pub. Sitting outside, under shade, but to my left was a bright spot. It’s weird how I can sense it arriving ... something about the quality of my vision subtly changes, and there it is. Fortunately for me it isn’t accompanied by a headache. It’s just really unsettling. At least now I’ve learned to recognise them and I just try to chill out while it do…

For whatever it’s worth, too much caffeine and dehydration does this to me. Chugging about 48 oz of water and throwing on a face mask for 30-60 minutes usually clears it up. If I do “nothing” it takes significantly longer to clear up.

I get the same, and all of these tend to be a trigger for me too -- too much caffeine, dehydration, and rapid light intensity change (like looking outside and then back to my computer screen).

In addition to chugging water and staying in the dark with a face mask, I've found that taking raw honey right as it's coming on makes it go away rapidly.

My long term prevention is taking magnesium daily and LSD once or so a year. Once I started doing that the frequency went to almost zero, and whenever I don't do that they start up again.

Re: Migraine is more than a headache – a rethink offers hope

#194

Post by beAbU »

ragtagtag wrote: post #132
rakejake wrote: post #112

I was diagnosed with migraine as a kid when I was 10. The doctor made me undergo a battery of tests including a contrast CT scan that consumed aj entire day, only to confirm at the end of the day that it was migraine. The migraines weren't even that debilitating but my mom was just being extra careful. After that, I still got headaches at a good frequency and tried all sorts of specialists from orthos to opthalmologi…

> I also do the bending while swallowing trick that was on HN sometime back Could you share the link for this, if you can find it?

Dont have the hn discussion link, but it was this paper that was posted.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9106553/

Re: Migraine is more than a headache – a rethink offers hope

#195

Post by melllvar »

dgacmu wrote: post #104
FloorEgg wrote: post #49

I got my first migraine in my early teens. I was over at a friend's house and we were playing in the basement on a summer day, then went outside where the sun reflected off a window into my eyes. It would start with a shimmering pattern obstructing my vision where the bright light was, which would grow into a c shape and get bigger until it surrounded my vision and then faded away. About 15 min after the shimmering p…

I'm glad you shared this - I also have light triggered migraines and I didn't realize there were so many others who also did. :) huh! I take ibuprofen and two shots of espresso and lock myself in a dark room and do deep breathing/relaxation -- the latter seems to have been surprisingly helpful for me in the last few years, and makes me wonder if my anxiety response to having the initial aura was actually contributing…

There are OTC meds you can buy that are marketed as "migraine relief" that are just acetaminophen + caffeine; my wife takes that and it usually works to relieve the symptoms (if she can catch it early enough).

Of course, then you take away the espresso - there's always a trade-off :)

Re: Migraine is more than a headache – a rethink offers hope

#196

Post by [deleted] »

Aurornis wrote: post #111
Foofoobar12345 wrote: post #99

I used to get frequent migraine attacks - there were times when I would be down 3 days in a week, just unable to be productive. A lot of it was induced by stress. I then tried something novel - I took some LSD. I had an intense psychedelic trip, dug deep into my psyche, realized I was a giant ball of anxiety. The anxiety's root cause was ultimately a fear of mortality (around the same time, my dad was going through a…

As a counter-antidote: I know several people now who have experimented with psychedelics with the goal of addressing mental health issues who ended up significantly worse. One of them got stuck with a nagging feeling that the world wasn’t quite real that lasted for a very long time, which resulted in a lot of anxiety.

[deleted]

Re: Migraine is more than a headache – a rethink offers hope

#197

Post by mettamage »

slibhb wrote: post #188
Foofoobar12345 wrote: post #99

I used to get frequent migraine attacks - there were times when I would be down 3 days in a week, just unable to be productive. A lot of it was induced by stress. I then tried something novel - I took some LSD. I had an intense psychedelic trip, dug deep into my psyche, realized I was a giant ball of anxiety. The anxiety's root cause was ultimately a fear of mortality (around the same time, my dad was going through a…

This is where pseudoscience comes from. You dropped acid and think it helped you but you probably tried many different things before acid which "didn't work". In all likelihood the acid had nothing to do with it; it was just a coincidence that your symptoms improved. Also, it's common to have a lot of migraines for a period in your life and then stop having them. Or sometimes the reverse. I used to get very painful m…

> This is where pseudoscience comes from.

I disagree, if it stopped it stopped. It could be from something else, but his LSD intake is the most likely candidate. It would become pseudoscience if he or she would claim that this will work for everyone.

Also, don't forget that science can make a similar flaw. Just because a drug works on average, doesn't mean that it will work for you or that it won't have any negative side effects. Human variation can be quite big with certain things.

Re: Migraine is more than a headache – a rethink offers hope

#199

Post by mentos »

Haven't had a migraine with visual auras since giving up alcohol fwiw. My friend's dad specializes in headache treatment he said majority is dehydration which would add up for my case but interesting to see a comment below where someone gets them from too much water so I guess having the correct water balance is key.

Re: Migraine is more than a headache – a rethink offers hope

#200

Post by DiscourseFan »

Foofoobar12345 wrote: post #99

I used to get frequent migraine attacks - there were times when I would be down 3 days in a week, just unable to be productive. A lot of it was induced by stress. I then tried something novel - I took some LSD. I had an intense psychedelic trip, dug deep into my psyche, realized I was a giant ball of anxiety. The anxiety's root cause was ultimately a fear of mortality (around the same time, my dad was going through a…

Psychedelic treatment of migraines has nothing to do with the trip, however. Be careful of confusing your feelings with your actual health, they are not always related.
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