
Misery in the Head - pelt
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/misery-head
======
csomar
Interesting the article doesn't talk about nicotine. Nicotine was my savior
from one sided-headaches that accentuated by continued computer and screen
abuse.

I have found nicotine to be a major relief and hardly addictive (though this
is probably very person-specific, so tread carefully). I could go on for a
month without smoking but if I'm working with a computer, I could not pull off
more than a couple hours without my vape device close.

Sometimes I wonder if smokers are actually addicted or suffer from other
unrelated-pain that makes them reliant on nicotine for relief.

~~~
allovernow
>I could go on for a month without smoking but if I'm working with a computer,
I could not pull off more than a couple hours without my vape device close

Be careful, I was in your shoes until I started vaping and the convenience can
make you a constant user, until one day vaping is such a part of your daily
habits that you're an addict.

Also if you're vaping custom juices and not something commercial like Juul,
you're probably consuming a different form of nicotine which isn't as
effective or addictive - though at some point I expect custom juices to switch
to nicotine salts as well, if they haven't already. Point is the nicotine in
salt form is much stronger - you'll notice that Juul hits more like a
cigarette, even with far less vapor.

Point is don't make the mistake I made and forget that you're playing with
fire. Granted there's nothing yet to suggest that vaping clean nicotine/of/vg
is harmful...

~~~
csomar
> one day vaping is such a part of your daily habits that you're an addict.

You mean the very act of vaping and not the nicotine itself. I can very much
relate to that.

Here are a few tricks I found that can reduce it:

\- Put the kit in the car. Helps more if the car is in under-ground or far and
it's cold outside.

\- Don't always put your kit on the charger. Intentionally, forget charging it
and don't have two batteries.

\- Buy a 30ml bottle at a time. It helps more if the dealer you are buying
from is far. You'll ration your vaping with that because then you'll have to
go all the way to buy the next bottle.

And yeah I'm not aware yet of nicotine salt and I use a very low concentration
in my liquid. I don't think I'm going to switch the current setup is just
fine.

------
ksangeelee
I am now almost certain that acetaldehyde is my migraine trigger. The sources
for me included chocolate, alcohol, tomatoes, certain fish and preserved
meats, all of which are common sources of acetaldehyde.

I can't always avoid these things, but I can usually avoid combining them, and
migraines are now less frequent and a lot milder - unpleasant rather than
debilitating.

I have also found that dehydration is a major factor. If I skip breakfast or
lunch then I make sure I drink, even if just tea or a large glass of water.

------
GlenTheMachine
I’m a chronic migraine sufferer. I’ve had them at least since I was five.

I strongly suspect that “migraine” is not a single disease. In fact I suspect
that _my_ migraines aren’t all the same thing. The headaches I get now are far
different than the ones I got when I was five. Then, I’d get a dual-sided
headache followed within an hour by the extreme nausea. Once I threw up I
could sleep; the pain would be gone the next day. I was also light sensitive.

When I was a teenager I got a right-sided migraine without nausea or aura
every Sunday afternoon at 2:00. You could set your watch by it. Again, I could
sleep them off. By that time OTC painkillers that actually worked were a
thing, and Motrin also knocked them out.

As an adult, I have no pattern, no nausea, and no aura. And OTC painkillers no
longer work, but a rizatriptan plus two Excedrin works like a champ. But now?
They’re triggered by poor posture. They start in my neck and end up over one
eye but not always the same one. If I try to sleep them off they’re much worse
on day two.

My son gets migraines about every third day, and neither the OTC nor the
prescription painkillers work very well.

We don’t know what causes migraines. Some but not all can be stopped via
interrupting the seratonin cycle. I think a big part of the treatment problem
is that the diagnosis is clinical.

~~~
burnte
I've had them since I was very young too. When I was a child they were
accompanied by really high fevers, up to 105F and would last for two to three
days, where I'd just mostly sleep in misery (they'd make me incredibly tired
and sleepy). The doctors would check for meningitis with spinal taps, they'd
check for encephalopathy, tumors, anything they could think of, nothing ever
came back positive. I was put on inderal for a while, but that didn't really
do anything. I'd have one every year or so, then since my teens I've only had
one every few years. The past few years though I'm back to the yearly
migraine, but no fever and they only last a day.

I'm not entirely convinced they're not just a side effect of our enhanced
cognition, something like a problematic feedback loop, maybe even something
related to epilepsy. The bigger the brain, the more than can go wrong.

~~~
FreeFull
Given the fever, it could also be something related to the immune system.

~~~
GlenTheMachine
Yeah, fever is a very unusual symptom to be related to “regular” migraines.
Something else was going on there probably.

But who knows? Maybe unusual electrical activity in the brain can cause
increased core temp?

~~~
FreeFull
Core temperature is controlled by the hypothalamus, which is part of the
brain, so that is certainly possible too.

------
Cougher
So many migraines are triggered by commonly used chemicals that are difficult
to remove from our environment. Even if they're sporadically present, it can
take hours for them to trigger a migraine, so the association is extremely
difficult to draw. Fragrance chemicals are very common triggers, but again,
they're very difficult to remove from our lives given their ubiquity and
increasing popularity to the point where people can't fathom living without
them. One of the worst offenders and most difficult to remove are fragranced
dryer sheets. People who use them are virutally never relieved of being
exposed from them given that they're in clothes, towels, and bedding, and the
chemicals offgas months or years. It's exceedingly difficult to find personal
care products that are free of these unnecessary chemicals. And "natural"
products like essential oils are common triggers and probably no better.

------
obituary_latte
Interesting read.

Frustrating to see that migraines are still underfunded and under-researched.
If you have ever experienced a migraine, you likely share my frustration. It
is about as indescribable an affliction as anything can be. The overwhelming
and crippling pain is something hard to convey to someone who hasn’t
experienced it first hand. It also seems that everyone experiences them
slightly differently.

I typically get an aura that starts at about the 4 o’clock direction just
outside the center of my right eye. The aura eventually expands and sometimes
will end up obscuring 85-90 percent of my field of vision. It will also
sometimes end up obscuring vision in both eyes.

In addition to the aura, I typically start feeling a bit of an upset stomach.
Not nausea but rather a gas-like -- almost butterfly-in-stomach type feeling
most closely associated with anxiety. Hard to say if it’s related to the
migraines in that it’s a precursor or adjacent issue or it’s due to the
anxiety of an anticipated migraine.

The aura lasts for 10-20 minutes usually then quickly dissipates. Over the
next half hour to hour, the pain will gradually start to creep in behind my
right eye. The pain steadily increases over the next several hours eventually
becoming incapacitating. I try to take 2 fioricet (the only medication outside
of opiates that I’ve found to be effective) as soon as I confirm the aura is
real and not just a bit of blurry vision (this is in itself quite an issue as
it can be hard to tell sometimes and I wonder if I’ve triggered migraines by
working myself into a tizzy out of fear of dealing with the pain). Sometimes
it helps and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s always tricky with meds to tell if
they are working because you don’t dare skip them to see lest you end up
suffering for hours on end.

The pain feels like it starts at a point behind my right eye and travels
straight back into my brain in a sort of football shape. I try to find a quiet
dark room and use an ice pack on my forehead and eyes. I usually have the tv
or something on to try and distract, otherwise I just sit there thinking about
how much pain I’m in. The hope is the fioricet etc helps with sleep which is
really the best way to get through.

I was accepted into our states medical marijuana program for migraines and it
has definitely seemed to reduce frequency. Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t
help me at all once a migraine hits.

The migraine will typically last 8-12 hours or hopefully will be gone by the
time I wake up if I’m able to fall asleep. However, for the following 1.5-2
days I’m extremely groggy and feel almost hungover without the usual hangover
sickness. If I cough or strain in any way, I will feel pain in the football
shape where the migraine pain was. Eventually this will fade over several
days.

Anyway, here’s to hoping we can eventually figure this one out. I wouldn’t
wish migraines on anyone.

~~~
dan00
Have you already examined if it’s diet related? I’m thinking about a histamine
intolerance.

~~~
AstralStorm
A few of the putative anti-migraine drugs are antihistamines. (Esp. H3 and
H4.) But there's still no evidence they actually work.

Relating anything to diet is somewhat silly at this point as there's enough
cases with wildly varying diets. It's a great way to sell a quack treatment
though.

