I get them too, and it’s always kind of amazing to me how many people come out of the woodwork to say they get them when they find out I do!
Fairly sure mine have allergy, hormonal, barometric, light, and food triggers. Mine are a lot better (a few times a year now) since I started taking Claritin every day, year-round, and got off estrogen birth control. It was actually a nurse who delved further into my migraines and knew about the WHO study regarding estrogen and migraines with auras–apparently estrogen birth control dramatically increases the risk of stroke in women under 30 who get migraines with auras.
Anyway, the migraines have been a lot less scary since getting off that (6-7 years ago), so there’s definitely a hormonal component for me. For a while they were like another poster’s, where I couldn’t form words properly–totally freaked out my husband, and was pretty scary for me also. I also had a few that I guess caused something like severe dyslexia. If I tried to read, I’d be looking at one word but my brain would be focused on/reading a word half a page away, or backwards. I developed new respect for people who have had seizures or who deal with dyslexia permanently!
Nowadays the migraines usually start with blind spots, then progress through sensitivity to stimuli (smells and noise especially) and nausea to the pain. Mine, thankfully, usually last less than 8 hours from start of obvious symptoms to finish. Then I feel hungover for about the next 24 hours, although often remarkably clearheaded as well, which is interesting.
I try to avoid MSG, nitrates, and red wine (the latter only became a trigger recently, sigh). Oh, and flax–possibly something to do with the phytoestrogens but I was unbearably cranky and more prone to migraines when I tried to ‘be healthy’ and incorporate flax into my diet. Also too much sugar and caffeine (1-2 cups of coffee a day is fine, more than that becomes a problem). If I let myself get hungry, and then deal with the hunger by eating sugary snacks, I’m just setting myself up for a migraine.
I often will get one, and then another a few days or a week later, so now if I get one, I’ll take ibuprofen prophylactically for about the next 8 days. Not much I can do about barometric changes or forced transitions from hot to cold (eg heated inside air to cold outside in the winter). For bright light (Florida in summer, anyone?) sunglasses and a hat seem to help. While driving, I consciously will rest my eyes/brain by looking at the greenery and/or shadows every few seconds, instead of the sunlight reflecting off the car in front of me.
Hmm. Not sure if the above was useful for anyone else, but perhaps therapeutic for me! Oliver Sacks has an interesting book titled, simply, Migraine. I only read a bit at a time because it’s simply not fun to read about one’s own affliction, but it has some very interesting thoughts and there’s a lot of validation and sympathy in there for the awfulness of migraines. There are probably other books out there with more in the way of treatment ideas, but it’s the kind of book you can hand your spouse or family members to give them an idea of what you’re going through, or if they think you’re just ‘making it up.’
I think it’s great that this thread was started, good idea.
