David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
I'm looking for some help in managing or coping with migraines based on your experience.
Background: I had my first ocular migraine in my 50s. This started as a strange visual aberration, in both eyes but only one visual field (i.e., either the left or the right, but only one, with the visual aberration gradually leaving the original visual field and moving into the other one). Back then, they lasted only about 10-15 minutes, with a mild headache and some sleepiness following. I had maybe 1-3 of them a year, always associated with the combination of stress and fatigue/insufficient sleep.
More recently, in the past 4 years (really since I got sick at the beginning of 2014), the migraines have become more frequent and more severe. While they are still always preceded by a similar visual aberration, they now involved a lot more pain, both in my head and behind my eyeball or both eyeballs. They last longer now, up to a day or two. And instead of 1-3 a year, they are now occurring with a frequency of about 1-3 per week.
I know one is supposed to try to keep a headache diary in an effort to identify and track precursors and triggers bu I will admit I'm having some difficulty doing this.
So I'm posing two questions for our Psychlinks Forum members:
1. What triggers have you identified for you? I know they will not necessarily be the same for me but I'm looking for ideas as to what sorts of things I need to track or pay attention to.
2. What helps when you get a migraine? What do you take for the pain? What do you do differently when you have a migraine? What helps and what makes it worse?
Background: I had my first ocular migraine in my 50s. This started as a strange visual aberration, in both eyes but only one visual field (i.e., either the left or the right, but only one, with the visual aberration gradually leaving the original visual field and moving into the other one). Back then, they lasted only about 10-15 minutes, with a mild headache and some sleepiness following. I had maybe 1-3 of them a year, always associated with the combination of stress and fatigue/insufficient sleep.
More recently, in the past 4 years (really since I got sick at the beginning of 2014), the migraines have become more frequent and more severe. While they are still always preceded by a similar visual aberration, they now involved a lot more pain, both in my head and behind my eyeball or both eyeballs. They last longer now, up to a day or two. And instead of 1-3 a year, they are now occurring with a frequency of about 1-3 per week.
I know one is supposed to try to keep a headache diary in an effort to identify and track precursors and triggers bu I will admit I'm having some difficulty doing this.
So I'm posing two questions for our Psychlinks Forum members:
1. What triggers have you identified for you? I know they will not necessarily be the same for me but I'm looking for ideas as to what sorts of things I need to track or pay attention to.
2. What helps when you get a migraine? What do you take for the pain? What do you do differently when you have a migraine? What helps and what makes it worse?