How to live with migraine?
I have a mission this year to help my wife learn to live with her migraines. My wife suffers badly from then, she is suffering as I write this post and it is quite a bain of our lives. Like anyone else I’ve searched for cures, she has too and she’s tried all sorts of remedies. Some things seem to help the symptoms but nothing actually prevents them. It seems like there is no fix.
Thankfully though I’m not so sure. I’ve been watching my wife suffer with migraines for over a decade and so I have researched quite widely. Through her experiences and others and all this research I finally think I’ve got a useful answer. I can not guarantee it can cure migraines for ever but at the very least it can make it much easier to live with migraines. It’s all based on my sports science knowledge and experience and I’m considering a headache as an injury to the brain and a migraine as quite a severe injury. As a result, the treatment is based on viewing migraine as an injury
My plan is to create a series of posts on migraine sharing some of the research I have found and the experiences I have had along with what I have found works.
The series of posts on migraines is about a journey of exploration. So if you have an opinion please share it. I’ve learnt that opening yourself up to being wrong is often the best route to being right. Whether I have the answer or someone else does doesn’t matter, I just want to start the journey somewhere so I am a post closer to a solution.
Posts
The posts so far:
- Do Migraines reflect an injured brain? My first post outlining the basic theory I have about migraine.
- Can you push your brain too far?
- Upper cervical care
- Trust me I’m a doctor: Caffeine and migraine
- The effects of caffeine told by the Oatmeal
- Migraine Pathophysiology
- Do you recover properly?
- Why train your nerves?
Research
Like you I have done a lot of research. I’m sharing what I can hear in case its helpful and to spark debate.
- How Much Glucose Does Your Brain Really Need?
- Migraines associated with variations in structure of brain arteries
- Caffeine and migraine report: Today it has made me nervous!!!
- National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)
- clinical knowledge summaries: Migraine management
- guidelines evidence based guidelines for the NHS
- How your brain can heal your body: Astonishing new research reveals the brain’s ability to rewire itself can conquer pain – and overcome ‘untreatable’ illnesses
- Botox for migraine from the Migraine Trust: Only patients with chronic migraine are eligible for treatment with Botox. No difference over placebo being found in tension-type headache, episodic migraine, and undifferentiated chronic headache
- Chiari malformation: A Chiari malformation (sometimes called an Arnold Chiari) means that the lower parts of your brain have been pushed downwardstowards your spinal cord, so they are below the entrance to your skull.
- Magnesium for migraines: an intervention to consider: An explanation of how magnesium can be linked to the brains ability to regulate neurotransmitters better.
- Genetic link between migraine and blood sugar levels confirmed.
There isn’t much for now but soon I will hunt through my archives and pad this out more.
Four Stages
@MigraineAction has described the four stages of a migraine which, I feel, makes the whole challenge a little clearer
Triggers
Katherines corner provides a list of some of the migraine triggers that seem to be associated with migraines. The image below is another example of potential triggers.
Via ahealthblog
More detail at Anatomy of a Migraine
