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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

#221

Post by almuhalil »

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.

In my case it's the combination of too much caffeine, dehydration, and intense exercise where my HR maxes out. 2/3 risk factors will typically not be enough to trigger one for me. HIIT workouts and soccer have done it in the past.

The aura (with scintillating scotoma) starts coming on usually an hour or so after the exercise is done, and I know I've got about 15-20 minutes before the actual migraine hits. Got prescribed Sumatriptan and it maybe reduced the intensity by about 25%. I'll have to try the water chugging, maybe with rehydration salts to speed up absorption.

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

#222

Post by tharkun__ »

yoaviram wrote: post #212
caitlinface wrote: post #70

I've suffered from migraines all my life. It worsened as I've gotten older. One day long attacks turned into three day long attacks. Then turned into five day long attacks. I've taken various preventatives and abortives over the years to varying success. It runs in my family so I never thought to see a neurologist for them. A couple years ago I had a bad string of them and my medicine wasn't really touching it, so I…

Same pattern for me. About a year ago migraines escalated to a few times a week. Debilitating. I started searching for a solution and discovered this book [1]. It basically recommends a low carb or even a keto diet. After three weeks migrants reduced to once every three to four months, and mostly because I'm cheating on the diet. Life changing.

This is what helped me as well, plus probiotics to turn my gut flora around.

I have a nagging feeling that "migraine" is actually not an actual single disease. It's rather a syndrome, i.e. a set of symptoms people have for various different reasons.

Through keto and the probiotics experimenting, I've learned much more about how the whole gut thing "works" (very much not an exact science!) for myself and that doctors in general are clueless about it themselves. Or ignorant. Or don't want to deal with anything they can't just diagnose with a 5 minute talk.

My migraines are food related. Without the probiotics I could somewhat control when I might get one by not slipping and eating something tasty but bad for me (like lasagna two days in a row - tomatoes bad). Add to this the fact that food in many cases takes two days to go through your system, eating a food and getting symptoms is delayed. Evacuating the food from your system would also cure the acute migraine headaches and other symptoms. With the right probiotics I can now eat all the lasagna I want and throw in blue cheese and red wine as well!

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

#223

Post by smeeger »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #200
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.

true. the one time i used lsd i had a horrifying bad trip, like a waking nightmare. the kind of bad trip that people die from. but my migraines completely stopped for five years afterwards.

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

#224

Post by AnthonBerg »

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…

Are you aware of the ample research and scientific knowledge on the interplay between the 5-HT2A receptor and inflammation, vasomotor effects, and effects of 5-HT2A activation on migraine and cluster headaches?

In… all likelihood you do not?

This review paper is particularly interesting, especially because nobody is discussing this and nobody has read it: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10....

The author is a serious person and this is a significant review paper of a solid and broad research foundation.

There are also studies on 5-HT2A agonists (“psychedelics”) on migraine and cluster headaches directly.

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

#225

Post by smeeger »

i have been getting bad migraines for as long as i can remember. bad enough to vomit when i was a kid. nothing ever helped except when i took a healthy dose of lsd in highschool and they stopped completely for five years or so. i had been getting them around once every two months before that. then they came back in college and slowly got worse until i was having basically one long migraine for up to a week at a time. then i started taking nurtech. it helped a lot but only worked half the time — and when it did work i could still feel my body reeling from it but without pain. here is something curious: i noticed that nurtech would put me into an extremely good mood… almost to the point of being a different person. without any euphoria or intoxication. specifically, i noticed that i was much more open emotionally, much more personable and friendly. more open to letting people in. and thats when i really started to have a new perspective on just how much this disease had robbed from me. i cant even imagine how awesome it would have been to not be interrupted by these migraines, to not have to feel the throbbing pain, and maybe the whole trajectory of my life would have been different if i had been a little kinder and likable which, if im being honest, i was kind of known for not being. i dont really take nurtech anymore because i have found that hard physical work, sunlight, reducing total calories and cardiovascular exercise basically put them into remission. and im afraid of what nurtech might do to me long-term after seeing how profoundly it alters my personality. based on everything i know, i think its safe to say that migraines are a metabolic disorder. neurons become overexcited due to metabolic dysfunction which then causes a depolarization cascade that sweeps across other regions of the brain. thats why keto helps so much. i wonder if ozempic has a beneficial impact on migraine?

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

#226

Post by cenazoic »

greenavocado wrote: post #6

Magnesium L-Threonate changed my life. I no longer experience headaches daily.

Yes! I’m a 50+ woman diagnosed as a teenager, and daily magnesium changed my life. I rarely get a migraine these days, and I’m glad to hear it’s effective for others.

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

#227

Post by ianburrell »

outime wrote: post #171
adaptbrian wrote: post #170

To hell with the drugs that they throw at you for headaches. It's your diet, lifestyle and poor sleep that's drives this bus. I'll save you 10 years of my suffering and the awful side effects induced from the cocktail of drugs in this article and say I've reversed cluster headaches and can now tell when anything is not good for my body goes into it. I did an elimination diet, I skip breakfast usually, and did 1 succe…

As someone who has healed from some weird conditions by doing what you suggest (specially diet), I would be cautious about implying that everyone else is on the same path. Some people may have excellent diets and sleep schedules but still suffer from migraines or other debilitating conditions. While I agree that lifestyle factors are often overlooked, especially in the West where we tend to medicalize every symptom,…

Another factor is that there are bunch of foods that are common migraine triggers. It is possible that he cut out his triggers with a limited diet.

For me, triggers include alcohol, chocolate, processed meats, fermented and pickled food, and hops.

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

#228

Post by ianburrell »

orthecreedence wrote: post #74
crazygringo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What personal observation makes you think everybody has a migraine all the time?

The pounding pain that corresponds with heartbeat. It makes me think there are nerves that register this all the time but there's some part of the nervous system that filters that signal out.

If you have pounding pain from heartbeat, you should go see a doctor. That is not normal.

One feature of migraines is not just a headache. Some people can feel it coming, called the aura. I feel weird during and after the headache. I frequently get the migraine weird feeling without the headache, so-called silent migraine. Migraines and normal headaches feel different.

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

#229

Post by diob »

I used to think everyone got migraines everyday, then I got diagnosed with sleep apnea. Hardly a thing for me anymore now that I use cpap, but I dealt with them constantly until my senior year in college.

But it reminds me how we only really know our own reality, and it's easy to assume our experience as "normal".

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

#230

Post by timc3 »

01100011 wrote: post #129
caitlinface wrote: post #70

I've suffered from migraines all my life. It worsened as I've gotten older. One day long attacks turned into three day long attacks. Then turned into five day long attacks. I've taken various preventatives and abortives over the years to varying success. It runs in my family so I never thought to see a neurologist for them. A couple years ago I had a bad string of them and my medicine wasn't really touching it, so I…

I had them in my 20s on a weekly basis but since I could stave them off with massive water intake I thought they were something else. I didn't get optical symptoms, it was just a really bad headache, nausea and chills that felt like a bad hangover. It wasn't until my 40s when I started getting optical migraines (which are scary as hell since they mimic a stroke) that I went to a dr and he diagnosed me. Apparently it'…

This is exactly the same as my experience. The first optical migraine was super scary.
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