You Know Your In The Migraine Zone When...

My post yesterday made ME think about "The Migraine Zone" and when we know we are entering it (I'm also pleased with my photoshop work and wanted to use it again. BTW, I'm an expert at Photoshop and Illustrator, if you need some custom work let me know).
There may be as many triggers as there are migraineurs. I thought I would list some of the things which trigger my migraines so, we might commiserate.

This list is not complete by any means, so feel welcome to add your migraine zones in a comment.

~~~~~  In No Particular Order  ~~~~~

You know you're entering "The Migraine Zone" when...

• Walking across the Walmart parking lot.
• Walking into Walmart and your buggy has a bad wheel.
• Just being in Walmart.
• Bed Bath and Beyond (enough said)
• The perfume counter of any department store.
• In a waiting room with someone who has enough perfume/cologne on, to douse an elephant.
• You find out your season ticket to your college football games is directly beside the visiting team's band section.
• Your driving along feeling fine and all of a sudden, you're blinded by the reflection of the sun on another car's chrome.
• The candy isle of the store is permeated by the smell of wintergreen (I'm allergic and any time I have any allergic reaction, it immediately puts me in the zone).
• Just before a storm with wind and rain. I usually feel better after the rain starts.
• There is a sudden change in temperature or barometric pressure.
• Loud, shrill, or annoying noises.
• The smell of incense.
• I wake up in the morning and I can't open my left eye because it's so puffy.
• I start to stutter.
• My eyes start to tear up and I see floaters.
• The left side of my face starts to droop.
• I don't get enough sleep.
• I get too much sleep.
• Sitting in front of the computer screen too long (and it's variable).
•   
• 
  

  Subscribe To Feed

Related Articles

• Migraine Hangover or Depression? (againstthegraine.blogspot.com)
• Migraine and Severe Motion Sickness (headacheandmigrainenews.com)
• Five Tips for Those Newly Diagnosed with Migraine (wordmetropress.com)
• Common Migraine Triggers (HealthCentral.com)

Elimination Of Food Migraine Triggers

We can eliminate some of our most common migraine triggers, by keeping track of what we eat. Using an elimination diet is the very best way to determine the food triggers of your migraine attacks. The basis of this diet, is to eliminate all possible foods and then, add foods back one at a time. As you add items to your diet, you will find the foods that cause you problems. Food triggers are not all the same for every migraine sufferer. Here are three things you can use to help you determine your food triggers and keep track of them;  * Note ~ There are a lot of links in this post. Take the time to check them out. You'll be glad you did.

Keep a diary of what you eat every day. This can help you identify problem foods.

• You can keep an online diary, create charts and lists of triggers at www.migraineliving.com
• The Online Diary at www.my-diary.org
• Penzu is an online diary and journal website at penzu.com
• Open Diary is another online diary or blog site, www.opendiary.com 
• You can also use Twitter to log your food intake. See this article from my technology website Plain Answers to Geek Questions - Using Twitter To Keep A Diary.
• Use computer software like Journler, LifeJournal, MacJournal, or The Journal

Learn about elimination diet by reading about it. The following is not an exhaustive list. There are other good books out there as well.

• Heal Your Headache: The 1-2-3 Program for Taking Charge of Your Pain by Dr. David Buchholz 
• The Elimination Diet Cookbook: A 28-Day Plan for Detecting Allergies by Jill Carter and Allison  Edwards.
• Food Allergies and Food Intolerance: The Complete Guide to Their Identification and Treatment  by Jonathan Brostoff M.D., Linda Gamlin.
• Allergy-free Cooking: How To Survive The Elimination Diet And Eat Happily Ever After  by Eileen Rhude Yoder

Visit web sites that provide migraine information for determining your triggers and how to get rid of them.

• Heidi Gunderson has a cookbook (Go Here) and a blog called Migraine-Free Cooking filled with wonderful recipes that follow an elimination diet plan.
• Headache and Migraine News at http://headacheandmigrainenews.com is produced by James Cottrill, and provides daily news on migraine medicine.
• Take a look at trigger information at mymigraineconnection.com a part of healthcentral.com.
• Visit Somebody Heal Me, by Diana Lee for informative articles on causes and remedies.

  Subscribe To Feed

Related Articles

• Stress, Diet, and searching for Triggers (headacheandmigrainenews.com)
• What are food allergies? (fitnesstipsforlife.com)
• Migraine: Don't Pull The Trigger (againstthegraine.blogspot.com)

Light Headed

We have had snow on the ground for weeks. That is unusual for southwest Virginia. Oh, the glare! Migraine sufferers know what I mean. All that snow reflecting light. It hurts even if you are not a migraineur. Light or glare is definitely a migraine trigger and makes one feel even worse. That is why I live in a cave.

There are ways to cut the glare and save your head. The first is obviously sun glasses. It is important to wear polarized UV glasses which block the glare. I wear mine all the time. I wear mine day and night, in Walmart, when I'm driving, when I'm fishing, and when I am out shoveling snow. I have friends that have never seen my eyes!

Wearing a hat with a dark brim is another method of cutting glare to your eyes. Black absorbs light, while white reflects it. This is why athletes put black under their eyes when playing sports. We would look even more ridiculous than wearing sunglasses at night, if we blacked our eyes. Wearing a hat or visor (who wears visors any more?) can help prevent more light from reaching your eyes.

A third way to diffuse light and prevent glare is to wear a dark shirt. White or lighter colored shirts reflect light, and hence can create a glare that can cause eye strain. I'm not saying to wear a black shirt all the time, but wearing a gray or even a tan shirt can make a big difference. It is amazing how much of a difference this simple clothing choice can make.

  Subscribe To Feed

Related Articles

• 1% Thursday: Migraines, Computer Screens, and Headaches (headacheandmigrainenews.com)
• Why light can worsen migraines (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Tricks of Light (againstthegraine.blogspot.com)
• 8 Ways To Reduce Eyestrain Caused By Computing (plainanswers4u.blogspot.com)

Migraine: 5 Things I Dislike About Walmart

There are more than 5 things that I hate about shopping in stores, or in the mall. Or, more often than I care to think about, Walmart.

"Walmart-itus" is what my family calls this aversion. Yes, I could shop somewhere else, but I know that I won't because "I am Lazy". It's on the way to... everywhere I go. So for the sake of convenience, I put up with the potential triggers and well thought out and marketed layout to get my daily essentials.

Here are 5 reasons I dislike shopping at Walmart, in no particular order. You may have some of your own that should be added to this list.

1. The lighting. The fact that it is fluorescent is bad enough, but they use too much lighting.
Even my non-migraine friends dislike the lighting in these stores.

2. The new layout. I've been in three different stores that recently remodeled. Each one of them has a very similar layout (except the oddball, which is lefty instead of righty). They moved electronics to the very back, forcing me to travel through All of the clothing departments, just to look at the new geek stuff. Haarummph.

The food and the toiletries are on opposite sides of the store, forcing a sea of people going back and forth! As my niece, Katie, always says, "Mylanta!!" (Don't ask me, its just her way of exclamation). Please quit trying to herd us poor shoppers back and forth in front of items we are not searching for.

3. Parking. Need I say more?

4. The lack of sound dampening. Metal roof and structure open for all to see. Tile on top of a concrete floor. As an architect, I always see things in a different way. Looking at ways things could be done better. So, I know there are ways they could suppress some of the noise, so that I don't hear the 10 year-old throwing a tantrum at the other end of the store.

5. The smell. No, I'm not saying that Walmart smells baaaad. I am just saying that my olfactory senses are offended at every turn by a new and overpowering odor.

Most of the time, it is several strong aromas at the same time. I use to like the coffee isle. I really like the smell of fresh ground coffee beans. Now, they have it facing the candy shelves. Somehow the smell of mint trumps the wonderful smell of coffee and I am allergic to wintergreen. Actually I'm allergic to salicylates and salicylic acid (wintergreen).

Don't even get me started on the smell of fingernail polish and the smell of permed hair at the front of the store. Talk about olfactory overload.

You don't want to get me started on the overpowering perfume or musk worn by the cashiers and the other shoppers. Some people really need to learn some proper product application techniques.

Migraine: Under Pressure Not Temperature

So, I've been thinking. There have been several articles about study results that were recently published about an increase in temperature increasing the probability of a migraine sufferer having an attack.

Though the numbers slightly disagree in percent of probability and in the amount of temperature increase, that is not really what I believe is the importance of the study.

I believe that the results demonstrated by this 7000 subject analysis, may show that the increase in temperature affects some migraineurs because they are susceptible to pressure changes.

The ideal gas law states that "in the ideal state of any gas, a given number of its "particles" occupy the same volume, and that volume changes are inverse to pressure changes and linear to temperature changes".

A very simplified example would be to imagine a bag of popcorn in the microwave. When you heat it up, the bag gets bigger because the inside pressure of the heat increase and popping corn in the bag makes it expand. Now, the atmosphere of the earth does not react in the same way, because our atmosphere is not trapped.

But, the volume of our skulls, is in fact a trapped atmosphere. Therefore the effect of the ideal gas law may actually explain a trigger for some people who suffer from migraines. The amount we each are affected differs. Some people experience no problems at all, while others may experience extreme pain due to the change in pressure. Not just the change in temperature.

None of us is the same physically, so it would figure that there are some people that are affected more by some stimuli than others. My biggest trigger is barometric pressure. I haven't been able to document every one of my triggers, but my records show that change in barometric pressure definitely is one, and now there is a possibility that nominal changes in temperature may be a part of that trigger.

It should be noted that the research being cited by the media may have some holes in it.

"Dr Andrew Dowson, the chairman of the medical advisory board of the British charity Migraine Action, said: "The study ... recognizes three main problems: that the doctors did not diagnose as per the International Headache Society guidelines; that the temperature was not that personally experienced by the patient but rather a central reading for the geographical area; and that the timing of the onset of headache was not accurate (the time of hospital contact was recorded). In addition of course we must recognize that most people with headache do not attend casually or even call a doctor but simply self medicate and rest."

These are some of the websites I used in preparation of this article;
http://www.medscape.com
http://somebodyhealme
http://themigrainegirl
http://www.independent.co.uk

Rainy Days and Mondays

Yep, "they always get me down". Mondays are obvious... They're Mondays!

Rainy days are a different matter entirely. I am (blessed?) with being a human barometer. I know in advance of any weather change, by the pressure in my head. I live on the east coast, and I could feel the front coming in last night. So much so, that I had to take a shot in an attempt to downgrade the migraine level.

Barometric pressure is known to be a big trigger to many of us. Terri Robert wrote about it back in 2006, "Migraines Often Triggered By Change In the Weather". I've also seen that many of you mention the weather when you complain of another migraine attack.

I am curious. How many other of you are affected by the weather? And, can you tell from your pain, what kind of change will occur? Please feel free to comment, or use the poll I have created in the right side panel.

Twofer

What a lovely day I had. Sarcasm. I went to a concert on Thursday evening where David Wilcox was the headliner. This was my fifth time to see him in person. I think that this was the best performance I have seen him give. He has a new album coming out in April, and I can hardly wait.

I had started the day with no pain at all. Zero, zilch, nix, nine, nil, nada. No pain. My day progressed and I felt confident enough to mark this status on my blog, and on twitter. My friend and I got dinner on the way to the concert, and we were the first one's to enter the venue (a narrow, but long room seating about a hundred fifty people). All was right with the world. What a great concert it was. I enjoyed every minute of it. Well, almost.

Everything seemed just peachy, when suddenly my nose was overwhelmed by some woman's perfume, from a couple of rows behind me. She may as well have been in my lap. I was unable to do anything, as the cloud enveloped me. I couldn't move. There was nowhere to go.

I told myself over and over again, concentrate on the music. Concentrate on the music. And, I was trying to do just that. David was having fun on the stage, not just performing by rote (as if he would). I was laughing, and crying (all at the appropriate times) until the lovely funk caused my neck muscles to go slack and my head fell forward as the piercing pain began.

I pulled my pill box from my pocket and took a Zyprexa, but it was too late to stop the pain. Here I was listening to one of my favorite artists, while sitting on the second row, and suddenly the dream was squashed. My migraine shadow overcame my perfect day. I stayed seated, listened as best I could, but the beating in my head nearly drowned out the music. My only luck was that he was nearly finished when the trigger was pulled.

Friday morning, I awoke with a full on Quasimodo headache, AND A COLD. A twofer. My head ached, my nose was running like a sieve, and my throat was full of slime. I ended up giving myself two DHE shots through the course of the day. I also took some Dayquil to attempt relief of the cold. I hardly left my bed all day.

Today, was much better. My migraine limited itself to a dull roar, and the Dayquil kept most of the cold symptoms at bay. I'm going to bed early, and I pray that tomorrow allows me to wake up fresh and pain free. Good Night.

Migraine: Don't Pull the Trigger

I am constantly at war with my migraine triggers. I guess they are called "triggers" because I may as well be pointing a gun at my head. My triggers are like Russian roulette, only worse... I never know how many bullets are in the gun.

There are times when I can have onions on my burger and not be affected at all. Onions are one of my triggers, but I love them, and feel that they are what makes the burger a burger. Other times they hit me right behind the left eye. There is no way to know. Sometimes it can take up to three days, before I feel the impact. Other times, it is immediate.

A few years ago, I read the book, Heal Your Headache The 1,2,3 Program, by David Buckholz, M.D., in which he talked about how we each have a trigger tank. That tank is sometimes running on low, and other times, it is filled to the top. If the tank is low, a trigger may or may not push it over the line. Some triggers may immediately make the tank overflow, causing a migraine. Everyone has a different size tank. People may have the same triggers, but the fill-line level of the tank may be different.

Onions are a migraine trigger of mine that sometimes cause me problems, while wintergreen is a trigger that ALWAYS hits me where it hurts (the head, of course). Just the smell of wintergreen will push me into what I call "a Gran Mal" migraine.

I found it beneficial to try an elimination diet, in order to determine my food triggers. I found that my triggers include onions, hot peppers and other nightshades, citrus, fresh bread, aged cheese, and processed or aged meats. It is important for me to stay clear of any of these triggers.

It is difficult because I like each of those foods, but they obviously do not like me.
By eating any of these trigger foods, I am putting bullets in the gun.