When a Migraine Strikes

and? how do you fix the migraine??

I get about 3 migraines a month... really bad ones. I'm only 15 but I often can't see things straight and my hands and sometimes whole body becomes numb. Other things such as loss of memory occurs or confusion. Another thing that happens is I get the Alice in Wonderland syndrom. No joke, it's for real. It feels like I am in a glass jar and everything around me is going on and I don't exactly know it. Anyway to getting rid of them. For ones like this 4 Ibuprofen will knock it out if you catch it at the beginning and I usually take a caffeine tablet. But keep in mind that I'm only 15 and this may be a high dossage if you only have minor migraines...

I have recently (within the last week) experienced what I have self diagnosed as migraines. About a week ago I had blurry vision in might right eye (like a lightning bolt) for about 10 minutes, then starting with my right pinky, slowly starts to go numb then continues up the right arm and right side of my face including my teeth and gums. The a bad headache. Now today it happened again. Same symptoms. Is this a migraine? What causes it and how can I remedy it? I am 25 and just experienced this for the first time, twice in one week. Please help.

Try to stay away from prescription migraine meds!
Yup, you read that right. Drugs like Imitrex, Relpax, Emerge and others in the triptan family are now shown to cause rebound headaches!
SO....if you want relief but more headaches to deal with go the prescritpion route. And it's an epensive one too....and inconvenient...only 9 pills in a prescription.
Also avoid taking too many aspirin, tylenol or advil. They can rebound too.
My advise after 20 years of this merry-go-round.
Find a good homeopathic or naturopathic dr. and look at changing diet, life style and adding supplements...don't wait...do this ASAP. Getting these things under control is key.
Don't fall into the lies the drug companies and drs. tell you. I seriously believe my imitrex use caused damaged to my sinuses and possibly may be responsible for the neck spasms I now experience.
All after using Imitrex "as prescribed" (take as soon as you feel a headache coming on). I would feel tingling in my nose and sinus passages. Then I started getting neck pain (never had as a symptom of my headaches before).
I have been off this stuff for about 1 year and still have the neck spasms. Sometimes without the headache, but most times it is part of the whole vicious cycle.
Look into licensed massage therapy too. And even chiropractic work on the head and neck can help in many cases.
Most importantly...avoid these dangerous drugs. They have many side effects...including DAMAGING YOUR HEART...some people have had strokes or heart attacks...other develop heart issues over time...and some have had issues with eyesight...
Good stuff to avoid.
Good luck....

I really have to disagree. Ive tried just about everything to stop my shocking migraines ( which Ive been having since I was 3 - now 30 ).

Changed my diet completely, tried all that natural crap, also tried a range of preventatives, and fixes, with little success.

Until I tried Inderal. Ive been taking 10mg of Inderal each day for the last year. On average Id get one migraine a week, and Ive not had a single one since I got my prescription.

Drugs do work, you just need to find the right one for you.

Warnings and Precautions

In rare cases, Inderal may lead to heart problems or heart failure in patients with no history of heart failure. For this reason, Inderal should be discontinued if there is any indication of heart failure.
Contraindications
Inderal should Not be used for people with the following medical conditions:

A negative or allergic reaction to Inderal or any beta blocker in the past.
Low blood pressure (hypotension): Inderal can cause a dangerous lowering of blood pressure.
Asthma: Inderal should not be used in patients with bronchospasms or bronchial asthma, since Inderal may block bronchodilation.
Precautions
Inderal may be used with caution in people with the following conditions:

Liver disease or impairment: a lower dosage may be needed.
Diabetes: Inderal can block warning signs of low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), as well as masking heart rhythm problems that may accompany diabetes.
Allergies (hay fever) during pollen season – Inderal may block treatement of severe allergic reactions.
Adverse Reactions
Inderal may cause the following reactions:

Dizziness
Sleepiness / tiredness
Male impotence
Weakness
Anxiety
Rash
Skin itching
Nausea / vomiting
Dry eyes

YUP...sounds perfectly 'safe'. Sounds a lot like Imitrex..may cause serious heart issues in those with no history of heart problems.

I guess it boils down to how I want to live the next 45+ so years of my life. Do I want these migraines to stop but not be able to go up a flight of stairs as my heart is ruined?

Do I want to have a destroyed liver? Just about all drugs go through the liver, so anything you take for years on end can cause damage.

I don't want to end up with worse problems than headaches due to a drug that has so many dangerous potential side effects.

As far as I am concerned, no drug is "the right one" for anyone. Drs. use these as band-aids as they don't know what truly causes these headaches. I'm willing to bet a good chunk of these headaches are due to the other "legal poisions" we comsume every day...food coloring, additives, chemical preservatives, etc.

Thanks FDA!!! Got to love ya!!

Hi, you sound exactly like me. It is not a treatment but I would like to suggest you something to get relieved from the pain.
I used to suffer from headache, but one day, the pain was unsupportable and I was forced to visit a doctor. They are the worst headaches of my life, a sort of migraine. I have had a ct scan and blood test and I was prescribed with cafergot [url=http://www.drugdelivery.c a/s33587-s-CAFERGOT.aspx][/url ]. It prevents me from migraines and I get some relieves with it... It is preferable to use it at the first sign of a migraine attack and then rest for at least for a couple of hours.

I have to agree with Scared by big Pharm. I was a sickly person for over 6 years until I stopped taking prescription and non-prescription drugs since Nov. 2005. Since then, I don't get that sick anymore. I realized that these drugs were causing a chain of side effects which made me sicker. What I've been doing for almost 2 yrs now is watch what I eat, exercise, and natural cures! I gotta admit though that natural cures are sometimes kind of slow before you feel better but at least I'm sure that I'm not taking anymore poison in my body.

My migraine takes over once a month (during my monthly period) and all I do is drink a cup of warm green tea (tea bags with leaves in it). It works BIG TIME for me. Try it.

Drug companies are not trying to fool us... without drugs in this world half of us would be dead right now ... but I do agree doctors are more about treating the problem and not preventing it... so I do agree that its' important to eat right, get the correct vitamins, massage, and general try to be happy. But please stop bashing the drug companies because YES they treat the disease but sometimes diseases need to be treated. once you have a disease it's kinda hard to prevent it . you have to treat it . I was born with a heart condition and without my meds I wouldn't be here so I"m proof of that. I guess I just get tired of all the bashing the drug companies get when drugs help BILLIONS of people in this world...

Hi there you guys. First off, I had chronic migraines from the time I was 15 to the time I was almost twenty, before I finally found something that completely relieved me of my migraines.

About the drug company discussion - there is no debating that drug companies *do* help a lot of people....but the truth is that they hurt more than they help. My problem with the drug companies is that they are doing their best to squash the natural health and prevention market. Take a look at your FDA. They will *not* approve anything that is not a prescription drug. They wont even research it. Now let's take a look at this for a second...how much sense does that make? There are quite a bit of natural alternative medicines that have been studied and show, with just as much scientific integrity as prescription drugs, to help rid people of their ailments as well as taking steps to prevent others, and they do not have the side effects. So then why wont the FDA approve them? Simple. Prescription drugs are a business, a billion dollar industry. After the research is done they can pop out a fifty cent pill and charge you 30 dollars for it. Then they can prescribe you more pills for the symptoms that those are causing. Bottom line - drugs *do* help people. And there are certainly cases where these medications are necessary for a person. However, if alternative medicine and prevention methods were looked into(other than just telling people they need to lose weight and exercise, and, "Oh, by the way, we've got pills for that!"), instead of trying to crush these industries, then most of the medical problems in this country would evaporate.

Back on migraines. As I said earlier, I used to have pretty bad migraines. They took me completely out of commission for about a week out of every month - this made it difficult doing things like school and work. I was completely useless, able only to lay up in bed with all of the lights out and no noises whatsoever. I was on a few different medications, all of which were designed only to lessen the migraine's power after it had already started. Some worked and others didn't, but the bottom line was that I still had the migraines just as often and they still took just as much of a chunk out of my life.

Then my girlfriend started telling me about a product that her father had been marketing for the past three years. She had heard countless migraine testimonials about it - people who had migraines like mine that, after having been on the product for a short amount of time, found that their migraines had disappeared entirely. I was extremely skeptical, and had two more migraines before her bossiness finally won me over. I had already started having the symptoms for my migraine that month, but after taking the product for only about two days my symptoms weakened, and then were gone. I never had that migraine, and since then, I have had only one. That was about six months ago.

I'm not going to say the name of it, frankly, because i don't want to come across as trying to sell anyone anything. But I know in my heart that the migraine community *needs* this desperately. I know what it feels like to have so much of your life taken away by these stupid things, and being told there is no solution. I want to help. There is no reason any longer any person should have to suffer through migraines the way that they are.

I'll be happy to give any information anybody asks me for. I won't shove anything on anybody, which is why i'm not saying the name. If you guys want to hear exactly what it did for me, just ask away. Feel free to e-mail me at

mahlon@noctourne.com

God Bless,
Mahlon Winstead

Can someone please help me...

I have been suffering from migraines since i was in highschool. I used to get them less frequent back them but they where bad. I get them now about 2 to 3 times a week and I get them so bad!

Here is my regular migraine headache.

It starts with an aura blind spot in my vision...witch then turnes into tunnel vision or blindness...after this the pain comes...it is such bad pain i cannot even explain it...it feels like some one is hammering spikes into my skull and brain...then i tend to get hallucinations, horrible scary hallucinations which give me a huge pit in my stomach...then i get all sick and start to barf, sweat, and shake...these headaches can last anywhere from 6 to 24 hours.

I have tried so many medications to help and none have worked accept a drug i just recently tried which was oxycontin...this was like a miracle medication, It took away the pain completely and kept it away...the only problem is i can't find any doctors who will prescribe it...they all say they don't like to prescribe it...but what i can't understand is...who cares what they don't like to prescribe or not...i am in hell...HELL!! and they won't give me the only medication that helps me? What is that! so my question is does anyone know about this medication and where and how can i get it...i need it so bad...it is the only thing that has given me hope...besides visiting the ER which costs me thousands for them to just give me morphine.

For the most part I agree with no meds. BUT sometimes you have no choice at the time. I also suffered with migraines 2-3x's per week. Topamax worked wonders for me and by the time I started using it, I was on my last leg. I was so depressed because of my "quality" of life and I couldn't be there for my kids because I was always in bed with unbearable pain. It saved my life at the time and helped me function as a normal person again. Unfortunately, the side effects became annoying (forgetfulness and weightgain) and I really didn't want to HAVE to be on it forever. I'm now off it completely and have been doing acupuncture which has almost completely kept those migraines away (1 in 4 months!). If you have to take meds. then you have to, but there might be other options out there for you too.

Good luck and God Bless!:)

First previous poster, the FDA does not research drugs,herbal remedies etc. The FDA approves new drugs by checking the info supplied by drug companies and asking for additional info when necessary.
Vitamins, herbal supplements and natural remedies can make claims without proving the efficacy of their products. The products are called food supplements and are not in the same class as prescription drugs. These companies do not want to spend the millions needed to thoroughly study and get a drug approved.
Big Pharma is not putting drugs on the market to hurt people. Prescription drugs manufacturers have to list evry side effect even if it is experienced by 1-2% of the patients.

D-rew, sadly you have become another victim of the narcotic world. It does take a way the pain, I know, I've been there! I was taking Oxycontin, norco, dilaudid, etc but then along with my drs we realized that these narcotics were causing horrible rebound headaches as well as being terribly addictive. I think all sufferers believe that when they start out taking opiates they are only taking them for the pain, but it can become an addiction issue really fast! Oxycontin is highly addictive. I wish it wasn't, trust me, but going down that road is really doing yourself a disservice. especially at your young age! It is so hard to know that a narcotic will take a way the pain and why should we suffer when there is help and you are right the ER is expensive and hard because you have to wait, migraines are always at the bottom of the triage list, and you have to give your entire history etc to Dr's who don't really care, but find a pain mngt Dr who can help you or go to a headache specialist. There is a way to figure out relief it just may take awhile and 2 weeks feels like 2 years when you suffer so badly. Narcotics are not the answer although they do help. It a tough situation.