migraine

So you feel a migraine attack coming on.  How do you explain it to someone who doesn’t understand?  Are you tired of saying,"Uh oh, I’m getting a migraine"?

Let’s get a little more creative, shall we?  Here are some suggestions to vary your approach, and break out of the rut…

Standards

• ~I’m about to feel a lot sicker than I look!
• ~Oooo … can I take a 24 hour vacation from my body?
• ~I’m having a migraine attack.  It makes me want to tear my hair out.  And I think I’m getting a headache too!
• ~How am I?  I’m doing great emotionally, spiritually, and mentally.  Physically, I’m a wreck.
• ~I think I’ll swing by my bedroom for a few hours of uninterrupted agony…
• ~I have one of the world’s most painful and disorienting diseases, and I’m having an attack.
• ~I wish it were only a bad headache.
• ~It’s not so bad.  Some problems with my vision, a little throwing up, unbelievable pain, [add your symptoms here].  That’s all…
• ~Is there any place near here where I can get a head amputation?
• ~Wanna hang around?  You can watch me throw up and writhe on the floor in agony!
• ~I like to live a balanced life.  I think I’ll light the left side of my head on fire so it feels like the right side.
• ~Uh oh … hey, do you want to trade bodies for a few hours?

If you want to sound intellectual

• ~I think my cortical depression is spreading!
• ~My genetic predisposition is about to let my brain stem get away with MURDER!

A poetic touch

• ~When the head aches, all the members partake of the pains (Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote)
• ~What a head have I!  It beats as if it would fall in twenty pieces! (William Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet)
• ~My heart is severely pained within me, and the terrors of death have fallen upon me.  Fearfulness and trembling have come upon me, and horror has overwhelmed me.  So I said,"Oh, that I had wings like a dove!  I would fly away and be at rest". (King David from Psalm 55:4-6)
• ~Headache roams over the desert, blowing like the wind.  Flashing like lightening, it is loosed above and below! (Mesopotamian poem, 4000BC)
• ~If I am wicked, woe to me; even if I am righteous, I cannot lift up my head.  I am full of disgrace; see my misery! (Job from Job 10:15)

For the history buff

• ~If only I had some elder seed juice, cow’s brain, and goat’s dung dissolved in vinegar! (a medieval migraine remedy)
• ~Know what Mary Queen of Scots, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Jefferson, John Calvin, Charles Darwin and I have in common?

Current events

• ~The World Health Organization says I have one of the world’s top 20 disabilities.  Guess which one!
• ~Hurrah!  Today I’m going to join about 20 million other people having a migraine attack!

Do you have any great one or two sentence ways to explain your migraine attack?  It’s your turn - leave a comment!  (Be kind - keep it clean!)

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If you want a good overview of where the science of migraine has come from and where it’s going, you might want to check out an article in this month’s Scientific American.  It was written by Dr. David W. Dodick, a Professor of Neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona and Dr. J. Jay Gargus, Professor of Physiology & Biophysics at the University of California Irvine.

The article provides a sweeping view of where migraine research has been, surprising developments in recent years, and where the research may take us in the years ahead.  Here’s an excerpt:

Not only has the specific understanding of blood flow changed, but so has the prevailing view of the root of migraine.  Migraine is now thought to arise from a disorder of the nervous system—and likely from the most ancient part of that system, the brain stem.  This newer insight has come mainly from studying two aspects of migraine: the aura, which precedes the pain in 30 percent of sufferers, and the headache itself . . . The most common form of aura is a visual illusion of brilliant stars, sparks, flashes of light, lightning bolts or geometric patterns, which are often followed by dark spots in the same shape as the original bright image . . . Aura appears to stem from cortical spreading depression—a kind of "brainstorm" anticipated as the cause of migraine in the writings of 19th-century physician Edward Lieving.  Although biologist Aristides Leão first reported the phenomenon in animals in 1944, it was experimentally linked to migraine only recently.

Read more about Why Migraines Strike from Scientific American.

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No, don’t share it with everyone, but do share it with your doctor, or those that might be treating you in the emergency room, for example!  A recent story of a 38 year old who had some confusing symptoms reminded me of this.

I try to remind people that they need to talk to a doctor who knows their medical history.  I can’t emphasize this enough.  The more your doctor knows, the better she will be able to diagnose and treat you.  If she is missing information, you could very easily end up with a wrong diagnosis, and treatment you don’t need (that could make things worse).

Or, you could end up with treatment that could harm you because, for example, it interacts with that natural remedy you’re taking, or that other drug, or that medical condition you failed to mention.

The story comes out of Toulouse, France.  The 38 year old female patient came in with symptoms looking like serious cerebral stroke, and she was treated with this in mind.  But it wasn’t stroke.

What she was experiencing was migraine aura - atypical aura.  She hadn’t mentioned her history of migraine, and so she ended up being treated for the wrong thing.  (see Migraine with atypical aura in the recovery room: a sometimes complicated diagnosis!)

Take the time to share your medical history.  Have the pertinent information handy - maybe this means carrying around a sheet of paper, or having a medical USB drive.  Keep it handy and get the treatment you need.

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Relieving the pain of cluster or migraine using oxygen is not a new idea.  But there are various kinds of oxygen therapy, and we need a better understanding of just how well it works, what type of therapy works best, and whether or not this may be a practical treatment.

Michael Bennett and his team set out to review the studies that have been done on two different types of oxygen therapy.  They discovered that there may indeed be some benefits.

The two types of therapy we’re talking about are hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) and normobaric oxygen therapy (NBOT).  The latter involves breathing pure oxygen at normal pressure, and the former ("hyper") breathing pure oxygen at a higher pressure.  HBOT therapy requires putting the patient in a specially designed chamber.

So the researchers pulled together 9 small studies that included a total of 201 people.

The reviewers didn’t find the evidence very strong, but there does seem to be some evidence that HBOT may help people with migraine and possibly cluster during the attack, and NBOT may help people with cluster.  From these studies there isn’t any evidence of relief from future attacks.

In the end, Bennett says,"We believe that hyperbaric oxygen is also a reasonable measure for migraineurs who have not responded to other measures to treat an acute attack.  However, the poor availability of hyperbaric chambers makes this an option only in a minority of health facilities."

So at this point it’s the practicality that’s the problem.  Most of us don’t have a HBOT chamber around the corner that we can hop into when we start into a migraine attack.

You can read the details in the official review: Normobaric and hyperbaric oxygen therapy for migraine and cluster headache

Have you ever tried any kind of oxygen therapy?  How did it work for you?  Leave a comment!

Popularity: 38% [?]