has anyone "cured" their migraines?

propranolol

propranololololololololololololololololololololol

i had migraines daily when i was a kid, went to the dr. and he told me to avoid a bunch of stuff - red wine, coffee, chocolate, cheese, blah blah blah. and he gave me some pills. the pills took care of it, and they went away. now i only get them in combination with a hangover or if ive significantly disrupted my sleep schedule

so point is, go to dr. and ask for pills

imitrex helps to manage them, but they still come.

i am actually not sure they are traditional migraines because i don't get the "aura" which is why my dr doesnt want to medicate me. i have all the other symptoms though.

god, i have not had one in months and months and months and i don't even want to think about them.

xp - yeah, mine aren't like that either, but they are powerful and last for like three days if i don't take medicine. they're not like normal headaches.

also those cooling pads you put on your forehead help a LOT. they have a ridiculous name like mr kooooool or something, but they help me get to sleep if the headache wakes me up.

I've only had a couple but they were pretty random and doctors basically told me nothing. haven't had one in years though.

yeah i get them for days. they are also strongly related to neck stiffness and tenderness, nausea, and sensitivity to smells/noise.

how long do they last bell labs?

at age 13-15 or so i used to get vicious migraines that were preceeded by an aura - they were ridiculously painful, immobolizing, emptied my guts, & lasted till i fell asleep

chronic migraines are typically less severe but way more trouble

xps

it is going to be really bad news if i don't figure out how to make them go away before i start school, since they seem to lower my IQ 100 points and make it impossible to concentrate.

yep, i have all those same symptoms.

just ask to try imitrex - maybe your doctor will let you try it. it's not an everyday medicine; you only take it when you know you're getting a migraine. the only negative side effect i've had is that it sort of makes me feel like my throat is really thick and while i'm waiting for it to work, my neck hurts. but if i didn't have it, i would have to take 1-2 days off work per month.

my mom has the same kind of migraine - years ago i tried to get her to do botox but she wouldnt - i dunno if thats still in vogue? she does some kind of accupuncture/biotherapy thing these days, shes kind of a hippy

btw it actually does seem to work, as far as i last knew - def stay away from caffeine & probably alcohol

oddly enough both of the medications mentioned are contraindicated for some pointless disease i might have

motherfucking raynaud's syndrome coming back to bite me in the ass!

rats
that sucks

have you tried the forehead pads? those got me by before i had this medicine.
they are v stylish
http://www.expresschemist.co.uk/pics/products/8147/0/kooandsooth.jpg

my mom used to swear by imitrex

bisprolol

Only been on them for a week, haven't even taken the full one pill a day yet (start out with half a pill to adapt) and I can already say I'm feeling a big difference. Neurology dept at Uni hospital I went to after 20+ years of trying to find solutions and answers thinks it could be related to the facial nerve since it starts around my eyes and teeth usually, so they're going to let me take beta blockers for half a year and I have to keep a diary with my headache experiences) - first couple of days were weird (feeling itchy on places you don't usually feel itchy, like your ankles, feeling hot and cold in places you don't usually feel hot or cold (my ears: do they look red? - friends: "dude, wtf?" , things like "hey, if I move my neck around like this I don't hear small cracking noises anymore!" - Anyway, haven't had my usual headaches anymore. Had a couple of other, completely new ones though. But writing everything down and going to take the whole pill from tomorrow onwards.

use more paragraphs, StanM. :-)

oh wow can you really not hear cracking noises in your neck from it? i need this shit now!

Beta blockers are weird though. Everyone reacts differently. I've had a LOT of strange experiences (laying awake all night and feeling sleepy all day, being out half a day when having to guess the time (my subjective time was WAY off the first couple of days: I asked my coworkers who was going to lunch with me because I was hungry and felt it was almost noon and we'd only been there for half an hour and it was only 9.05 AM, long term/short term memory stuff (forgetting things I just did and suddenly thinking about people I haven't thought about for decades) etc. etc. etc. - this stuff has faded away after the first couple of days though. I'm curious about what's going to happen when I double the dose tomorrow. If you read something about a Belgian's head exploding or inventing time travel: that'll be me :-)

Anyway - your mileage may vary, try to find a specialist who knows what he's doing (this University I went to has a neurology dept. that does specific headache consultations.)

(also: thinking there's something wrong with my TV because sound and mouths just don't feel as synched as they used to anymore) (not everyone has these strange effects, don't worry)

Interesting: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-migraines-strike

My wife has been having "classical" migraines (auras, etc.) more than once/week lately and it's really taking a toll on her. She's going to see a neurologist about it in a week or two.

i had migraines daily when i was a kid, went to the dr. and he told me to avoid a bunch of stuff - red wine,

YOU DRANK RED WINE AS A CHILD? YOU NAUGHTY KID! :-)

I'm thinking my migraines are partially induced by "tension". I had a mad crazy one yesterday. :-(

Pharmacist told me there's a "herbal" cure that might work. Fuck that. I want HARDCORE druxors.

Beta blockers are weird though.

Some heavy shit that is, no? Neighbour used that shit a lot.

herb

the OTC migraine medications (excedrin migraine et al) work well for me, although some people find them useless.

Tell me more about this neck-cracking thing. I only get migraines occasionally but a few times I've been out drinking and become kind of horrified that I can't move my head without the back of my neck popping. The next day I've always felt like shit, even if I hadn't drunk much (but I can't remember it happening when I'm not out drinking for some reason).

(is there a way of telling a migraine from just having a bad headache and feeling really fuckin' sick if you don't get the visual disturbances? or is it one of those things where all a sufferer can say is that it's so bad you just KNOW? the migraines I've recognised as such have all had the aura, but I have felt similar from time to time with no visual distortion, so maybe I'm getting more than I think. last time I recognised one: when I gave up drinking Coke. oh shit, I've been drinking Coke every day this week, and need to stop again...)

i thought i had a sinus headache last week because it didn't FEEL like the migraines i usually have, but apparently migraines can disguise themselves as other types of headaches.

the main physiological difference i usually sense between a migraine and a regular headache is that the former feels like the pain is pushing outward, while the latter feels like pushing inward.

my mom's migraines were basically cured by acupuncture. She used to get terrible hallucinatory migraines all the time. Hasn't had one in the 2 years since the treatment.

I've had four visual migraines in the last two weeks, and they're taking a toll. Twice I was able to knock them out with ibuprofen before they became full headaches, the other two times I felt the remnants of the migraine that might have been for the next day or two.

Not sure what's causing them. At first I thought it might be the light from my computer, which I spend entirely too much time at, combined with some sharp sunlight that was hitting me. But now that I'm recovering from yesterday's near-migraine, nursing a pain in the back of my head, I'm wondering if they might be stress related. Anybody else dealt with something similar?

i've been having a bizarre one which i'm not sure counts as a migraine because it's so short - it generally lasts around five minutes. five minutes of intense throbbing pain in time with my pulse combined with deafness in one ear and loss of balance (my blood pressure is normal). i fully expected the neurologist to know what it was right away but he was dumbfounded by the combination of symptoms. i have to go for a MRI scan next week which is quite exciting.

Oh yikes. Good luck—there's so many odd-ass things that could be. How long have you been having those?

cheers Evan, good luck with yours too. i've been having mine for about six months but they come in waves of several a day for a few days then none for weeks.

I've got a friend who suffers from crippling cluster headaches who swears by a very small amount of magic mushrooms as an alleviator. Not practical to use that frequently, obviously.

i haven't had a migraine in about a year! not sure what made the difference, but i have made a concerted effort to reduce stress in my life and also went off hormonal bc, which i think is the real reason.

I guess this is a silly question, but how do you reduce stress? It seems like it should be such an easy answer—avoid stressful things?—but that's not always so possible. Maybe I just need to like take a few minutes out of my day and just pet my dog for a bit or something. I really dunno.

i have made a concerted effort to reduce stress in my life and also went off hormonal bc, which i think is the real reason.

it's hard to post about this stuff without being tmi, but hormonal bc has helped my migraines tremendously.

xp For me it was all about recognizing stressors and my reaction to them. I've had to do some goofy stuff in order to psych myself out of being worked up about situations that I can't control, or taking responsibility for things outside of my realm of power. Stuff like that. Figure out where it's coming from and how you react, then you can think about solutions.

Exercise REALLY REALLY helps for me because I am a nervous energy warehouse; this may not be true for everyone, but I know it's true of me. A lot of it is knowing yourself, as cornball as that sounds.

re: bc -- i had been on it for a really really really long time and adjusting to my natural hormones has been...interesting. Rocky.

Exercise REALLY REALLY helps for me because I am a nervous energy warehouse; this may not be true for everyone, but I know it's true of me.

This has really worked for me too. Last year I went for an extended period of time where I couldn't get much exercise due to a knee injury, and the number of migraines I was getting went up dramatically.

hey i sort of cured these. medically administered botox of all things (i don't let them do the visible parts of my face because i don't want it to make me look plastic. just the back and sides of my head and upper shoulders). but ironically i now get auras WITHOUT headaches.

my neck still cracks constantly and i have a disc herniation that i just had a cortisone epidural for yesterday. i think the neck pain has always been related to the migraines.

going off hormonal bc made me get more migraines too. now i'm on a hbc that makes me never have my period and i don't get pms migraines, cooool.

omg that reminds me -- i haven't had that horrible neck pain or cracking either! how weird. bodies, man.

right after i posted another aura came on. at least i'm assuming that's what this is. maybe my eyes are just fucked up? it's like my entire field of vision is one big shimmery eye floater.

I don't want to freak anyone out unnecessarily, but please don't hesitate to get medical attention for any migraines, especially if they come on suddenly. My sister's migraines turned out to be a tumour that went undetected for months because she put off having the scan. Obviously a worst-case scenario, but so not worth the risk. Please see a dr asap folks.