I’ve written before about my migraines. Quite a few times, actually. So I’m trying to not repeat what I’ve told y’all before. However, I’m still starting with a quick recap:
I’ve had migraines since I was 18. I had 2 migraines a month for decades (generally around the time of my period). In 2015, they grew really bad, and I started having 12-15 migraines a month. I changed my diet to keto and stopped all my migraine medication, since, as it turned out, that medication was what was causing my migraines. Now, I have 2-3 migraines per year.
This last week, I had one of the worst migraines that I’ve had in a long time. Probably since 2019.
What caused it? A bunch of things. Stress is always something that may trigger migraines for me. I wasn’t in ketosis, and I hadn’t been eating low carb for close to a week at that point. Then I had a glass of red wine, and woke up the next morning with this migraine.
Most people who have regular migraines have medication that they take.
I can no longer take what I used to call my miracle pills.
What do I do instead? Particularly when I’m in so much pain I’m nauseated? When all light is stabby? When even soft sounds make my head ring? When all scents are too much and make me even more nauseated?
I drink water that has salt in it. A lot of salt. Enough that I can taste it a bit. Years ago, I heard a neuroscientist on a podcast, and he talked about how people who have migraines need more salt than other people. (Side note, y’all know that the RDA put out by the government is only for white men, right? Women, in general, need more salt than what’s in the RDA to start with. I don’t know what people of color might need, but the RDA doesn’t really address them either.)
I don’t know what the science or the mechanism is for this scientist’s conclusion. I just know that I works for me.
I walk slowly, taking deep breaths, for short periods of time. It’s sort of a walking meditation. Walking quickly is right out. So is walking outside. But the tiny house is just the right size, a few quick turns, then I go collapse again.
I fast. I’d stopped eating at 4 PM the day before, and I didn’t eat again until noon.
Those three things dropped the pain from an eight to about a four, over the course of a few hours.
After I ate and I got some food in my stomach, around 1 PM, I took the holy trinity of substances: aspirin, acetaminophen, and caffeine. That knocked the pain down another couple of notches rather quickly.
The migraine still didn’t completely go away for a few more hours. I’d woken up at 3:30 AM in pain, and I didn’t get out of pain until 6:30 PM, so the attack lasted fifteen hours.
Migraines, for me, aren’t just defined by a tremendous amount of pain. I can have quite painful headaches. The difference is the additional symptoms.
A headache just means my head hurts.
A migraine means that lights are stabby—like an ice pick going through my eye into my brain. Scents and sounds also bring a lot of pain.
The good news is that because I’m no longer taking any medication, I no longer get the migraine hangovers: when I was afraid if I bent over my skull was going to split open and my brain would fall out. By the next day, I was back to 100% well.
For the rest of the week, I was really compliant with my diet. Very low carb. Low lights at night, bright lights in the morning. Exercise and more deep breathing, working on my stress levels.
Fingers crossed, I won’t have such a bad migraine again for quite some time. Usually, I get migraines every 120-150 days. (Yes, that’s the pattern. It’s weird.) This migraine happened only 90 days after my last one. So I need to be better about my diet et al to make sure that it’s a good long time before my next.
Questions? Feel free to ask them here or DM me. I know that going med free isn’t for everyone. However, I also know that for a lot of people, the meds are what are giving them the migraines in the first place. (Look up rebound migraines—they’re caused by medication overuse. And yes, they are a thing.)