Dealing With Headaches

Studies done in UCLA confirmed what women have known for millenia — that females get more migraines then males. 29.5 million Americans have migraines — and two thirds of them are women. To know about the difference between a headache and a migraine, click here

So, WHY do women get migraines more than men? The theory is that females have “a more exciteable brain” and therefore are more open to migraine triggers than male brains. This is true in lab mice, anyway. The female rodents’ brains could be easily stimulated into brain wave patterns that indicate migraines. This condition is called cortical spreading depression. Male rodent’s brains took more jiggling. Apparantly this is because they wouldn’t stop and ask the scientists for directions on where the experiments were going.

Seriously though, it thought cortical spreading depression is what mechanicaly fires up migraines. It is still not 100% known just what causes migraines. The earlier theory that migraines were a contraction and dialations of blood vessels has been scrapped. Work is concentrating now on stopping these cortical spreading depression brainwaves with a drug called memantine. This drug is still in the experimental stages.

It’s not entirely sure just why women have “a more exciteable brain” than men. Women do have to deal with the tidal flow of the menstral cycle, which may cause a constant chemical change in the woman’s body. Women then go through more changes than men. When you add stress, an unbalanced diet and insomnia, then you have a brain more disposed to getting migraines.

Could it be that women think too much? Well, that still has yet to be determined. But making sure the toilet seat is down can help ease the minds of any women in your life.

For more deatils about the UCLA study, click here.

Hope this helps.

We’re currently going through a heat wave here in the Philadelphia area. Last night I treated myself to some ice cream straight from the freezer. Within a few minutes, I wish I hadn’t. I’d totally forgoten what an ice cream headache is like.

Ice cream headache, freezer head, or “brain freeze”, is a temporary but overpowering headache when you consume cold foods and drinks too fast. This is a stabbing pain in the forehead that nearly knocks you over and often makes you gasp. For most people, it lasts for less than two minutes. For me, it lasted nearly ten minutes.

The good news is that ice cream headache goes away. It is also completely preventable (don’t anything super cold), but what about when you are dying for a cold drink or popsicle on a sweltering day? Aren’t you saving yurself from dehydration by quickly downing a few slurps of Slushie or a huge bite of ice cream?

Not really. The cold is too much of a shock to the system. You have to somehow sip or nibble and then really dig in once your body has adjusted. The ice cream headache is actually a good headache — it keeps you from doing yourself a worse injury from internal cold burns. It is the body’s way of saying, “Knock it off, already!”

For a more technical explanation, it is thought that the extreme cold that hits the palate, upper teeth and tonguetriggers the trigeminal nerve which triggers the temporary but crippling headache in order to get the body temperature back into balance.

You usually do not have to see a doctor about ice cream headaches.

For The Migrane Prone

If you have been diagnosed with migraines or chronic headaches, you need to know that you are more suseptable to ice cream headache than other ice cream chompers. This doesn’t mean that you have to exile ice cream from your life. Just slow down even though you want to dive right in. If you can, hold the drink or ice cream at the bottom of your mouth and partly open your mouth, exhaling out the initial cold blast. Cover your mouth if you have to. You might look a little funny, but that’s a small price to pay for having your ice cream and not the headache, too. Bottoms up.

Hope this helps.

The chances are if you have migraines, you also have panic attacks. The panic attack can happen before or after the migraine. You don’t necessarily have to have a depressive or other psychological disorder in order to suffer both panic attacks and migraines. Dealing with panic attacks, no matter when they happen, can greatly reduce the severity of your migraine pain.

My Personal Story

I started getting seemingly inexplicatble, unpredictable migraines to the point of vomiting when I was 24. I found out my Mother also started migraines when she was 24, but her triggers for severe migraines turned out to be different from mine. When the migraine started, so did the panic attack.

The panic attack felt like an insult to injury. I was positive a tiny terrorist had moved into my head and randomly set of migraine bombs. I feared that for the rest of my life I would never know when a crippling migraine would hit and for how long it would last. I became scared to do much of anything, lest I not be able to get into a dark room and whimper when a migraine hit.

I rarely told anyone about the panic attacks, becuase I was ashamed of them. I didn’t even tell my doctor. I felt the panic attacks were a sign of weakness or some sort of twisted character flaw. I did not then know that migraines can trigger panic attacks — and possibly the other way around.

Nearly ten years went by when I would try to live a normal life, but was constantly interupted by the migraine bombs. Various boyfriends and employers were completely unsympathetic. But after ten years, I began to recognise the signs of an oncoming migraine and so could take medicine and effectively cut the migraine off at the pass. And I learned another thing — the panic attacks eventually went away.

When I finally discovered the trigger for the worst of my migraines (caffeine withdrawal), the severity of the panic attacks seemed to subside. I knew what caused them and I knew how to deal with it and — most importantly — I knew I wasn’t about to die. I could safely ignore and even laugh at a panic attack when I would get them during a headache.

Women More Affected

The world isn’t fair, is it? Women already have to put up with menstration, menopause, bad hair days and now are more prone to having migraines and panic attacks together. Read the findings of a 1997-2003 article here.

It is also reported that lower income women were more likely to get panic attacks and full blown migraines than women who made a lot of money. Perhaps the rich women hire the poor women to have their migraines and panic attacks for them? (Only kidding!)

Both panic attacks and migraines are though to be tied in to some malfunction of the production of serotonin, in either sex. Just how and why is still unclear.

Dealing With Panic Attacks

Whether linked to your migraines or not, tell your doctor if you get panic attacks out of the blue. Panic attcks are usually the feeling of impending doom (often a hideous death), accompanied with breathing problems, heart palaptations, sweating and shaking. Panic attacks can also be the signs of other medical disorders such as hypoglycemia, so don’t be ashamed like I was to get them checked out.

When you hae a panic attack, look around you. Try to shut off your imagination and concentrate on what you are currently seeing or hearing. You need to breathe deeply, too. Keep reminding yourself that you are safe, and the feelings of dread and panic will pass.

This is, of course, easier said than done. You need practice. You could also tell your trusted friends and loved ones that you are prone to panic attacks. If they see you begin one, they could remind you, “Take a deep breath,” or “What do you see right in front of you? Tell me every little detail.”

Other remied that have helped me with panic attacks were:

• holding on to a stuffed toy, a small smooth marble egg, my necklace (if I happen to be wearing one), or a sympathetic person’s hand. The power of a soothing touch is greatly underestimated.
• Taking a few drops of Bach’s Rescue Remedy.
• Inhaling an aromatherapy oil like frankinscence or lavender, which encourages the body to take deep breaths even when paniced.
• Making and drinking a cup of tea — any tea. Tea soothes me and just doing the familiar ritual seems to distract my attention from the panic attack. If you are really shaking badly, don’t attempt this.
• I don’t do this, but my Mom does — she chants the rosary to help calm her down.

You will most likely instinctively find a way to comfort and distract you when you are feeling frightened. Your way of calming down from a panic attack may be different from the meathods I described above.

When you calm down, your body relaxes a bit. You also have the assurance that if you’ve survied one migraine, you can survive it again. And life goes on. When you are not afraid, your pain doesn’t seem to be able to bite as deeply. This can lessen the severity of a headache or migraine.

Hope this helps.

If you think your headaches are bad, you can take comfort in knowing that somebody actually has it worse than you do. Warning: you might want to take your medicine before you read this.

Nearly 60 years ago in Germany, then 4 year old Margaret Wegner was running while carrying a 3.15 inch pencil. Perhaps the scissors were missing. Unfortuntely, the pencil torpedoed through her cheek and up into her brain. At the time, medical surgery was not advanced enough to attempt removing the pencil and so the pencil was left in in order to keep Margaret alive. As she grew, the pencil didn’t shrink any. Surgery was still thought too dangerous.

And so Margaret Wegner suffered headaches and nosebleeds for the next 55 years. Part of the pencil was finally removed on Aug 7, 2007. A peice four-fifths of an inch long had to be left inside, as that would not come out. Her doctors think the remaining piece “does not pose a danger”. (Famous last words). They did not say whether the pencil still writes. More detail on the story can be found here.

The moral of the story seems to be that, in the right hands, pencils can be deadly weapons.

But seriously, having headaches a lot is not the way people are suppossed to live. If you have headaches a lot, even if you know why you do, KEEP going to the doctor. Go to several. Make yourself a pain in the butt. Help will eventually come.

The odds are that you won’t have to wait 55 years to get some relief from your headaches, but be persistant. Take the strange test. Try a new medicine. Test that wacky theory. Keep up your headache journal. Never write yourself off as a lost cause. Maybe something can’t be done today, but you never know tomorrow will bring.

And don’t obsess over the fact that you get headaches. Even poor Margaret found time to get on with life and even get married.

And in the meantime, be glad for the little things in life we normally take for granted … like not having a pencil rammed up your head.

When I began having migraines, it was suggested to me to keep a heache journal. At the time I had two jobs so I just couldn’t be bothered to add yet another task to my already over crowded day. So it took nearly ten years for me to discover the triggers to my migraines. When I finally determined them, it was becuse I finally started to keep a headache journal. And I discovered what my triggers were in mere weeks.

I would have literally saved myself a lot of headaches if I had just kept a headache journal in the first place!

Now that I’m a freelance writer, I look back on all my years of panic and misery and call it “research” instead of “me being an idiot.”

Unless you are masochistic, keep a headache journal if you get frequent headaches that interfere with the quality of your life and seem to have no cause whatsoever. Learning what is causing your headaches is the best thing you can do to not only treat your headaches, but take some control back into your life.

Each Journal Entry

You’re not writing The Great American Novel here. No one is going to grade you for proper grammer, punctuation or spelling. You only need to jot down a few words about your latest cranial conundrum. Things you should include are:

• what happened right before the pain started
• what the weather was like that day
• what you ate that day
• what you didn’t normally eat or drink at that time
• for women, what time of the month it is
• what medications you are taking
• how long the headache lasted

The Journal Itself

You could use anything you can make marks on as a headache journal. I used an assignment pad with a hideous gaudy cover so I could see it easier. The small size made it easy to cart about anywhere.

Some people prefer to keep a headache journal on their computers, especially if they want to show the journal to their doctors but yet keep a copy for themselves. There are good links to simple diary or journal keeping software here. You can also make your own Excell spreadsheet of your headaches…unless it’s dealing with Excell that gave you the headaches in the first place.

If you forget to make an entry, you forget to make an entry. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Do it when you can, and fill in what you can remember of your headache. Don’t do as I did and try to make entries while I was having the migraine. You have enough problems as it is without adding onto them.

Over time, look back over your entries. A pattern should be emerging. If you can’t see it, show your journal to your doctor, who might be able to see something you missed. Even show it to your best friend or Mother, who might also be able to see something you missed. Becuase we are so close to our headaches, it can be hard to get a good perspective of where they come from all by ourselves.

Once you find a pattern, then you can get on with proper treatment and management. And if you have been keeping a headache journal for a while now and still don’t seem any wiser as to the causes of your headches, keep on trying and don’t give up on yourself. It is better to do something proactive about your headaches rather than do nothing helplessly and suffer.