Migraine?

[trof]

Are yours brought on by weather changes?
Specifically frontal passages?
How about bright sunlight?
Mine can be triggered by either.
Or neither.

I have ophthalmic migraines.
Usually no headache.
If there is one, it's very dull, and just in the frontal lobes.
But I always get the peripheral flashers.
Sometimes to the point of tunnel vision if they're really severe.

To my knowledge there's still no medical explanation as to WHY these happen.
:shrug:

[Rising Phoenix]

1. feel for you

I have the same......years ago it was pain, now its days.....sometimes a week of vertigo, lighthead, nausea, sensitivity to light sounds smells......and very blurry vision......scares me every time. Mine are usually hormonal.

[trof]

9. Mine are very mild.

The worst part is usually the 'flashers'.
Light prisms in my peripheral vision.

[graywarrior]

2. Sometimes they just show up

If I think about republicans too much, I get one.

[trof]

8. I hear ya.

[Mike 03]

3. I am having a migraine seige right now. I usually get two a year: One in early Spring and one in

October.

Dry, windy weather?

When the sun comes out and it begins to warm up?

The pain is only one part of the equation; worse is what it does to my vision. It's just a huge blur and I see "floaters," and I get very nauseous.

I don't really know or understand it.

All I know is that this morning I ordered more Imitrex, a drug that seems to help.

[trof]

10. 'Floaters' or 'flashers'?

Almost everyone has floaters at one time or other.
A minute black dot in your field of vision.

Flashers are (for me) a string of triangular rainbow prisms in my peripheral vision.

[Jamastiene]

4. Yes.

Right now, I have the worst headache and congestion. Cold hot cold hot cold hot. It wreaks havoc with my entire respiratory and blood circulation system every time.

[Mike 03]

5. One comment on your post: There are medical ideas about why they happen.

Go to www.medicalnewstoday.com and search on migraine.

There is a ton of info.

[trof]

6. Yes, there are. Ideas. And theories. And guesses?

When I first discovered that's what I had I was told (by an ophthalmologist) to eliminate peanut butter, red wine, and 'strong' cheeses from my diet.

Turns out they have no effect whatsoever.
At least not for me.

Stress is a big factor.
That I do believe.
But I have little or no stress in my life now.
Back when I first got them, I was in a very high stress profession.
I was an airline pilot.
:shrug:

[Mike 03]

13. My heart goes out to you. Those things you were told were older theories.

What I should have said is that there are "new theories." LOL

They could be wrong. It's true. The ideas about migraines are changing all the time.

They have to do with things like air temperature, air pressure, inherited vasculature. Even Botox has been proposed as a solution to the issue.

I'm sorry if my answer came off as superficial or condescending. I didn't mean that all all.

Just: There are so many ongoing studies and new meds coming out. There are two new Migraine Meds that were just approved this last month.

I hope you get relief!

The tryptans seems to help those in my family, but I know they don't help everyone. Hopefully new drugs on the horizon will provide some relief.

Best,
Mike

[trof]

14. No, no. Not at all.

Not superficial or condescending.

Mine are so mild that they barely want mentioning.
The vision part is the most perplexing.

[mentalsolstice]

7. I got them in my 20s and 30s

I'd have an excruciating headache, extreme sensitivity to light and sound, nausea and vomiting, low fever, and after the first couple of days, stomach problems because I hadn't eaten anything solid for 48+ hours. The last one I had, I was 34. I was begging my parents and SO to please just shoot me, I was crying, couldn't move my neck or head without it feeling like I was being stabbed in the head with a butcher knife.

They took me to the emergency room, and it turns out I was cutting my 4th wisdom tooth and it was impacted. My other wisdom teeth probably caused the previous episodes. The following week I had all 4 wisdom teeth extracted (they were threatening to crowd my otherwise straight teeth), and I haven't had a "migraine" since then. However, mine were so bad, I have real empathy for those who suffer from them regularly.

My story is anecdotal, if you suddenly find yourself suffering from migraines, go get your teeth checked.

[leftyclimber]

11. Ophthalmic migraineur (-euse?) here, too.

Best we've been able to figure I have four triggers: dehydration, lack of sleep, not eating, and MSG.

Cutting MSG out of my diet has made a huge difference in my migraine frequency. I've only had one classic migraine in the last year and a half, and only a few ophthalmic migraines.

[achtung_circus]

12. A few each year.

Usually triggered by a change in the weather, a high pressure front approaching, although there is a slight stress component. Pain, aura, sensitivity to light, nausea. Probably a genetic component as my aunt has them, my brother and sister both had them.

For the first 4 months we were together my GF had them, triggered by "O". Quite the bummer, but we're very past that now.

[Shell Beau]

15. I had them weekly as a child. Sometimes daily.

They were hereditary for me. I grew out of them mostly. I still get the occasional migraine.

[jobycom]

16. I got them bad as a teenager. Seemed to be MSG. I got them less later.

I stopped eating much meat in my 20s, and they reduced, and I gave up meat altogether in my 30s, and have never had another one. I've heard they may have been nitrate or nitrite related, or sodium related, and I've heard that they just reduce in some people with age, so that may be the only reason.

The MSG ones were the worst. It felt like my eyeballs were being squeezed, and I would vomit repeatedly until I was dry heaving from the pain. It hurt to close my eyes, so I would try to fall asleep with them open. They were almost like seizures more than headaches. Had them from fifth grade until tenth, when finally a doctor suggested they could be MSG. I quit eating anything with MSG, and rarely got the most extreme ones again. I went from missing forty to fifty days of school a year from the headaches to not having them at all just by giving up MSG. After that, the times I did get them again, I could always trace it back to the last meal I had, and it was always connected to MSG, and since I checked labels religiously, it was a rare thing for me to eat anything with it.

I'd still get the beginnings of migraines, but they wouldn't develop quite as far. They would just cripple me a little, rather than completely incapacitate me. I don't know if I saw flashers, but my whole body would go sort of numb. Even those headaches were painful, but not like the worst ones. I've had a full-blown gallstone attack, a shattered toe, and an ankle run over by a car, and none of those came close to the pain I felt as a kid with those headaches. The good side was that it made me not care about tension or sinus headaches--those were a breeze, comparetively!

So, I don't know if MSG caused them, or if MSG triggered something else in me that caused them, but the relationship between me eating MSG and getting these blinding headaches was clear. I can eat MSG now and then and not have any problems, but every time I had the problem I had recently eaten something with MSG.

Trof, I used to eat a lot of crab and shrimp boil, and I'd always get headaches afterwards, because all those Zataran's boils were loaded with MSG. I noticed that connection even before the doctor suggested MSG, so I used to tell people I was allergice to shellfish to get out of explaining about the headaches.

[dysfunctional press]

17. the ones i get are just awful- and i'm not exactly sure what triggers them...

although, as with most that have befallen me lately, it's in some way tied to my ankylosing spondylitis.
i can have several a week, or several a month.
i also have a condition called raynaud's syndrome- a peripheral artery disease, and as such cannot take imitrex, so my 'cure' is vicoprofen.

mine are usually a sharp throb throughout my head, usually centered in the back, and extending behind either eye- it can vary as to which one. i don't usually get the flashers- just SEVERE pain. i'll usually lay in a dark cool room- there is generally NO functioning possible. i might eventually sleep some...but i invariably end up puking- then getting some more, longer sleep...and by then i'm usually okay. the absolute worst is being woken up in the middle of the night with a raging one. it's like daggers in the brain- they're difficult to get rid of, and precious sleep is VERY hard to come by.

good luck dealing with yours.
may they be few and far between.

btw- in regard to flashers...i recently had some freaky things happening with the vision in my right eye- it turned out to be an age-related thing called 'vitriolic collapse', or something like that- it's when the jelly in your eyeball liquefies and partially oozes out. as gross as it sounds- as long as you don't get a torn or detached retina at the time- there really aren't any serious consequences.

[femmocrat]

18. Yes. I have had one for two days.

I think it's the weather. My other triggers are heat, humidity, noise, and stress. All of which are found in abundance in my job.

I always get them on the left side of my head. I take Imitrex. I wouldn't be able to work without it.