what triggers your HA/migraines?
05-09-2011, 02:47 PM
#12
Super Member
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 1,991
I had terrible migraines until I went on thyroid medication. I haven't had one since. My doctor says they shouldn't be related but I didn't change anything else. I recommend getting your thyroid checked. It could be an easy and cheap permanent fix.
05-09-2011, 03:17 PM
#14
Super Member
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: state of confusion
Posts: 4,541
stress, almost anything because of noises. I have super sensitive hearing. I hear dog whistles and "silent" alarms.
My idea of the TV on really loud is on volume of 4. I usually keep it around 2, or if I'm really tired level 3. Most days I have ear-plugs in so I can function normally.
My idea of the TV on really loud is on volume of 4. I usually keep it around 2, or if I'm really tired level 3. Most days I have ear-plugs in so I can function normally.
05-09-2011, 03:55 PM
#18
Super Member
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Merced, CA
Posts: 4,188
All of these. Even now, after menopause, when migraines are "supposed" to slow down, I can still get a strong pain that will lay me out for the day. Not so often, that I'll admit, but I'm darn careful about what causes them. Years ago my primary doctor sent me to Modesto because she said that I was in danger of becoming addicted to pain killers. That allergy/pain specialist made me write out all my favorite foods that I could remember in 5 minutes. Then without looking at my list, she put down a page of Migraine No-Nos. And the worst part of it was it was nearly identical! Lots of the same foods....very ripe bananas, hard cheeses, sweet pickles, souse meat (head cheese), wine, prepared meats containing either or both Nitrates or Nitrites, anything with vinegar, or fermented. Lots of artificial stuff did not even then have all the ingredients on the label and that doctor told me to eat foods that LOOKED like the food it was supposed to be. Not shot from guns, "improved" by a lab and not by nature, etc.
Plus, and this should be done by all, the doctor told me to start a food diary as soon as I felt the pain coming on. Said to go back 3 days before, and write down everything that I had eaten and drank. To put down if I was overly tired, mad, sad, any life change, and to not forget the weather. Wet, extra dry, windy, any change at all. And to get a barometer, and put down the readings on it. (After I broke my ankle and had metal pins put in it, didn't need any barometer to tell me the weather, my ankle pain would and still does tell me when it's going to be bad here)
As for pain meds, if I can't stop it in the first few moments, or wake up with it, the best pain killer I've found has been plain old Codeine. Enough to block bowels, to be blunt, but that doesn't bother me because I can kill the pain!!!
As for triggers, you've all come up with most of the causes.
From what I've learned about it over the years, it is also family
related, you inherit the tendency towards them. My Mother used to tell of her own father walking home from work and throwing up all the way, and making short trips down to the creek to wet a handkerchief to put over his forehead and with his hat pulled low to block out all of the setting sun he could. He wasn't a drinking man, but kept some home made medicines on hand for just this reason. (his sons, my uncles, made this "medicine" back of the old home place)
Some of the "auras" include tunnel vision (me) with a fog around my long distance vision. One of my sisters and a daughter have frozen lightening, when they see that they know
they'd better go home, go to bed and take something that will knock them out. Then there's the lost "spot" that my brother was scared about because he knew the cops didn't want any sort of nut wondering around with a badge and a gun in the back of his pants. He was very grateful when I could show him that in a book, drawn by migraine victims of the things they saw when in a migraine mode. He said that he lost parts of pages, he could not see a part of a human face, etc. And a male nurse told me that his started when he seemed to be looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. Several other warnings, you will soon learn them, that much I can guarantee.
Most of us have the pain in either half or one quarter of our heads, mine is always in the top right hand side of my head. I can feel like a band is around my head...like the Indians used to put a wet rawhide band around prisoner's heads and let them sit in the sun to dry and shrink. It HURTS. Noise hurts. The sunlight can hit you in the face like a board across it. And then there's the joy of nausea, any time you move very fast. Then there's the feeling of a large, very hot ice pick being shoved into your eye and rotated!! Migraines aren't any fun at all~~
Ginger root tea will help a lot with nausea, found that out a long
time ago. I used to buy the whole Ginger roots and put them through a blender or food chopper or food processor. Then I'd pat them down flat and freeze them, then I could break off some and make me some tea with the correct strength to it to settle my stomach. I would also sew lots of my husbands' lead fishing weights in a long piece of casing, then sew it closed and across every inch or so. Then freeze it till I had a migraine, put it on top of a damp cloth on my forehead while lying in a darkened bedroom with "white" noise from a gentle air conditioner blowing cold air on my face while I was well covered.
Plus, and this should be done by all, the doctor told me to start a food diary as soon as I felt the pain coming on. Said to go back 3 days before, and write down everything that I had eaten and drank. To put down if I was overly tired, mad, sad, any life change, and to not forget the weather. Wet, extra dry, windy, any change at all. And to get a barometer, and put down the readings on it. (After I broke my ankle and had metal pins put in it, didn't need any barometer to tell me the weather, my ankle pain would and still does tell me when it's going to be bad here)
As for pain meds, if I can't stop it in the first few moments, or wake up with it, the best pain killer I've found has been plain old Codeine. Enough to block bowels, to be blunt, but that doesn't bother me because I can kill the pain!!!
As for triggers, you've all come up with most of the causes.
From what I've learned about it over the years, it is also family
related, you inherit the tendency towards them. My Mother used to tell of her own father walking home from work and throwing up all the way, and making short trips down to the creek to wet a handkerchief to put over his forehead and with his hat pulled low to block out all of the setting sun he could. He wasn't a drinking man, but kept some home made medicines on hand for just this reason. (his sons, my uncles, made this "medicine" back of the old home place)
Some of the "auras" include tunnel vision (me) with a fog around my long distance vision. One of my sisters and a daughter have frozen lightening, when they see that they know
they'd better go home, go to bed and take something that will knock them out. Then there's the lost "spot" that my brother was scared about because he knew the cops didn't want any sort of nut wondering around with a badge and a gun in the back of his pants. He was very grateful when I could show him that in a book, drawn by migraine victims of the things they saw when in a migraine mode. He said that he lost parts of pages, he could not see a part of a human face, etc. And a male nurse told me that his started when he seemed to be looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. Several other warnings, you will soon learn them, that much I can guarantee.
Most of us have the pain in either half or one quarter of our heads, mine is always in the top right hand side of my head. I can feel like a band is around my head...like the Indians used to put a wet rawhide band around prisoner's heads and let them sit in the sun to dry and shrink. It HURTS. Noise hurts. The sunlight can hit you in the face like a board across it. And then there's the joy of nausea, any time you move very fast. Then there's the feeling of a large, very hot ice pick being shoved into your eye and rotated!! Migraines aren't any fun at all~~
Ginger root tea will help a lot with nausea, found that out a long
time ago. I used to buy the whole Ginger roots and put them through a blender or food chopper or food processor. Then I'd pat them down flat and freeze them, then I could break off some and make me some tea with the correct strength to it to settle my stomach. I would also sew lots of my husbands' lead fishing weights in a long piece of casing, then sew it closed and across every inch or so. Then freeze it till I had a migraine, put it on top of a damp cloth on my forehead while lying in a darkened bedroom with "white" noise from a gentle air conditioner blowing cold air on my face while I was well covered.
05-09-2011, 04:04 PM
#19
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Michigan U.P.
Posts: 963
I've had them all my life. But I've had extreme headaches, where I'd have one all day, every day for weeks at a time, just three times in my life. 1, when I was a teenager (which is when they started.) 2, when I was pregnant. And 3, going through menopause. Has to be hormonal.
05-09-2011, 04:14 PM
#20
Super Member
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Merced, CA
Posts: 4,188
Mine would last on the average of 3 days at a time. I know that I lost a great deal of my children's' lives, but they knew how to clean house and cook, thankfully. DH was very supportive, he had a lot of pain of his own, so we could comfort each other.
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