How often do you get migraine headaches? Please describe them in full detail. How do you know what triggered them?
Caution: reading about migraine headaches may trigger a headache.
Mine are usually on the left side of my head, a vertical line down the eye, and sometimes it hurts so much that both a tooth and the left ear feel it. Really bad ones last about 3 hours (once it then transfered to the other side of the head and the fun began again); mild ones can last days or recur for a few days in a week.
I never had one until a few years ago and now I get them usually a couple times a month. My mom had them and I never understood what was so bad. Now I understand.
I usually get pain above my eye sockets and usually get nausea as well. No amount of Advil or Tylenol will do anything. Imatrex or however you spell it is God’s gift. It works wonders.
Mine seem to get triggered by diet. If I eat too much or don’t eat enough I can get them.
Once in my life, when I was about 16. I suddenly couldn’t see more than about 2-3 feet in front of me, and had to lie on a couch facing the cushions for about 2 hours before I could get up again. It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my head in terms of sudden intensity (the root canal where they left part of the root in the tooth was bad, less intense but over a longer period of time).
If you stick your finger in your left eye socket, in the center, above the eyeball… mine hit me about an inch or two straight back from there into my head.
I’ve had various prescriptions for 'em over the years, but nothing seems to kick it all that much; fortunately, I don’t get them very often. When they do hit, I wind up lying in bed in as dark and quiet a room as possible with the covers pulled up over my head for several hours until it goes away. Except when I stagger into the bathroom 'cause I think I’m going to puke.
Exedrine migraine, a dark quiet room, and about six or seven hours is usually what I need. If they didn’t go away, I’d shoot myself in the head to make 'em stop.
I don’t get them so often anymore, after I left puberty or so they dropped of sharply. When they do come they usually manifest over my left eye. They used to last a few hours and was allways coupled with intense nausea, they usually with me throwing up, then I could fall asleep and the headache would usually have passed when I woke. I took to ramming my fingers down my throat, to vomit out the nausea, I did it often enough that it stopped working, these days I can shove my whole hand down my throat and get no gag reflex. I also get worse hangovers than most anyone else I know, with headaches, nausea and vomiting lasting into the evening and sometimes triggering a funk that can last another 3 or 4 days. I have a friend that also has migraine attacks and he gets these horrendous hangovers as well.
I always have Excedrin Migraine handy, as well, but I have found that getting enough sleep (7-8 hours) has greatly reduced the frequency of mine. On a side note, Excedrin Migraine and regular Excedrin have the exact same formula.
250 mg of acetaminophen
250 mg of aspirin and
65 mg of caffeine per tablet
I get them maybe 2 times a year. Mine are a pretty standard pain on the backs of my eyeballs and into my head a little. I feel slightly nauseated from time to time, and the only thing to do is lie down and close my eyes.
The strangest thing of all is that I know they’re coming. I have an early warning system! About 10 minutes before the pain begins afterimages appear in random splotches all over the place! They have no normal distribution and appear to be incredibly intense afterimages that just don’t fade. They effectively reduce my vision anywhere from 20-70%. Whenever they show up I slam down some caffeine (slugging 20oz Pepsis sucks but is effective) and am usually okay. They don’t come back if I can get enough caffeine in time.
Anybody else have an early warning system? I may be the next evolutionary step!
I believe that is fairly common and they have specific “onset” drugs for you to take once you have the onset symptoms begin to occur. Often, the pills you take are orally disentigrating so they break down fast and get into your system quickly with no need for water.
I’ve never had a migraine, but one of my buddies has been coping with them for some time. With him, any more than 3oz of beer will give him a migraine headache. I don’t know any of his other triggers, but he’s made that one abundantly clear.
I get a bad headache once or twice a month. Really, really sore, and might even make me nauseous, but they aren’t migraines. I think it’s the constant jaw-clenching that causes them. So if I’m really anxious or tense during the day, I’ll get it at night.
They suck a lot! I get them often, they started in my teens and both my mother and father had them so I was a marked man.
Mine are basic, no auras, usually one half of my head (right side) front to back or back to front, throbbing most of the time. On bad days it feels like someone is in my head cleaving it down the middle from the inside while poking my right eye out from the inside at the same time. I’m usually sick as well, and sound will sometimes bug me (like being in a state where everything sounds like it’s peaking even if the volume is low.)
I have 2-4 a month, usually the lower end of that so I consider myself lucky. My triggers, at least the ones I know of are things like caffiene (which I’m NOT giving up), stress, very low sleep, low water, and to be honest I think the weather as well like maybe during a weather change.
I’ve met some folks who are much worse off than me so I am happy with only needing some heavy OTC meds and the occasional Imitrex (which is like the best thing ever!) Probably the thing that has helped the most is to always have an agreement with my workplace on what I do on a very bad day. Fortunately I’ve been able to work from home when it’s very bad so I can keep the lights low, absolutely no sound, etc.
I used to get them all the time, then I linked them to drinking nutrasweet/aspertame.
There’s a Princeston study proving that aspertame doesn’t cause migranes and as far as I’m concerned it’s about the same as those oil company studies proving that carbon isn’t a cause of global warming.
I’ve since avoided diet drinks and any artificially sweetened foods and now I hardly ever get the headaches. When I do it’s right in the left temple and I totally understand the desire to shoot yourself from pain. If I was somehow doomed to a life of migrane pain at al times I’d seriously kill myself.
Oh, my favorite. The earliest migraine I can remember was in 6th grade. Essentially I get what feels like a band around my head that just squeezes really fucking hard. They will last anywhere from a couple hours to a couple days. The extremely bad ones are triggered by pressure changes in the weather. For example, two days ago it was 63 degrees when I went to work at 4 in the morning, at around 10am a cold front came through and knocked the temperature down to the high 30’s. I was inside at the time, and I had to drop what I was doing and run outside because I was pretty sure I was going to bork from the pain. The intense part lasted for about an hour, then my head hurt for the rest of the day.
I used to get migraines frequently, so I did go to a doctor, which couldn’t tell me thing one about them. When I was younger, they would occur maybe every other month or so. Now they only really get triggered by the seasonal changes, which Im thankful for. I can pretty much predict when they’re going to happen now. So maybe 3-4 times a year, give or take the amount of stress I’m under.
