Archive for July, 2009

Preventing Those Painful Migraines

Do you suffer from painful migraines? Would you like to do all you can to prevent them? Unless you are unusual and enjoy pain, the answer is probably yes. Preventing migraines involves several steps. The first step is to recognize what your risks and triggers are for your migraines. The second step is to follow your treatment plan, which probably includes some preventative medications prescribed by your doctor. The third step is to avoid those things that trigger your migraines and the last step is to make any lifestyle changes that can help to reduce or avoid migraines from occurring.

Step One - Recognize Risks and Triggers

When you go for your initial appointment to be diagnosed, your doctor probably asked you to fill out a medical questionnaire. This questionnaire included personal and medical information about you and your family. There were most likely some specific questions about what things might trigger your migraines. Common triggers are certain foods and scents, irregular sleep and wake patterns and stress. You can establish your list of triggers by keeping a journal in which you take notice of what you were doing prior to the start of migraines in order to establish a pattern. The pattern may reveal certain foods that are consumed consistently before the occurrence of migraines, or scents or a pattern of interrupted sleep. It may also reveal that you are under stress and what kind of stress. Avoiding your triggers once they are identified can help you to reduce or eliminate your migraines.

Other lifestyle changes you can make that may make a difference in how many or how often you get migraines is to start participating in regular exercise such as aerobic exercising to reduce tension. Your doctor can gear an exercise program to fit your health, likes and abilities. Other exercises that may be suggested are walking, swimming, cycling or dancing. Participating in exercises on a regular basis can help by improving your health and reducing your migraines.

Women should speak with their doctor about any hormone supplements they are taking such as estrogen to see if avoiding or reducing them can has had an impact on their migraines. Sometimes when estrogen is reduced this can make headaches worse. Estrogen medications include birth control pills, and hormone replacement therapy. There are always alternatives or replacement therapy that can be discussed.

Step Two – Follow your treatment plan

It may be obvious, but well worth pointing out. In order to prevent the pain of future migraines it is important to follow the treatment plan that you and your doctor has designed. This plan may include some preventative medications or lifestyle changes that may make a difference. Always keep an open line of communication between you and your doctor.

Step 3 – Probably the most difficult one to follow through with, is to avoid those things that trigger your migraines

Let us say that you discover by keeping a journal that every time you eat chocolate candy you get a migraine. It may very well be that chocolate is a food trigger from migraines for you. Over a two-week period avoid all chocolate and see if it makes a difference in the occurrence of migraines. An absence of migraines is a pretty good indication that you are on the right track. Some people can’t stand going to public events that are known to be noisy because noise tends to trigger a migraine attack. Everyone will have different triggers.

Step 4 - Make any lifestyle changes that can help to reduce or avoid migraines from occurring.

Lifestyle changes that may prove helpful in avoiding migraines are to keep to a regular sleep schedule, avoid noisy public events, and learn how to recognize and handle stress better and to exercise on a regular basis to promote relaxation and to relieve stress. 

Tags: preventing migraines, migraines

The Quest for Migraine Headache Relief

Migraine headaches are unlike any form of pain you have ever encountered. Those who never experienced the agony have a hard time comprehending the length to which a sufferer will go in order to end the ordeal. What often goes by the wayside is the fact that in addition to the pain in the head, there is are concurrent symptoms, such as nausea and vomiting, gastrointestinal upset and dehydration, vision problems, loss of balance, hot flashes, and even severe mood swings.

As you can see, the quest for migraine headache relief is an urgent one for the sufferer and when the onset of a migraine is compounded with additional symptoms, the urgency is even more pronounced. In addition to the foregoing, migraine headaches do not simply last for a couple of hours or a day, but in some cases may span two or even three full days! This causes a severe disruption in the migraine patient’s life, work, schooling, and overall activities. In some cases these migraines have been known to ruin entire occasions and vacations.

There are copious pharmaceuticals which promise a level of prevention, ease of pain, or a quicker conclusion of the headache. Unfortunately, these drugs have sometimes severe side effects and because of the quantities that need to be taken during a severe migraine headache, they may lead to insomnia, disorientation, dizziness, and severe physical exhaustion. In some cases they may also intensify the nausea the patient already experiences, giving way to further dangers of dehydration if vomiting occurs.

The quest for migraine headache relief also encompasses the use of holistic means. There are a number of aromatherapy options open to sufferers, all of which are supposed to take the edge off the pain and relax the muscles. The majority of holistic measures seek to lead to bodily relaxation in an effort to allow the bodily symptoms of the migraine headache to subside more quickly. While in the throws of a severe migraine attack, these holistic means have mixed results, depending on the patient’s ability to focus on the relaxation techniques or heightened sensitivity to the scents of essential oils.

Those with severe migraine headaches find it hard to rely on natural remedies to overcome the pain. In some cases there may be a lessening of the agony, but it is so gradual and takes so long that the sufferer in desperation will once again reach for the pharmaceuticals to ease the pain. At the same time, many holistic measures focus more on the prevention than the treatment of the symptoms associated with this disorder, and it is therefore a bit of a mixed bag of treatments when the migraine headache does form.

It is fortunate that there have been some promising studies with melatonin, a natural substance that is not safe for everyone to supplement. Although certain segments of the population are discouraged from taking over the counter, prescription free melatonin, those who are able to make use of it find that they are much more able to forego migraine headaches without the need for pills. In the quest for relief, this is a significant advance! 

Tags: migraine headache relief, migraine