4 replies to this topic

[bl4ck1ce]

For most of my teen & adult life, I've suffered from frequent migraines. They used to happen once a day, or at least several times a week. In my early 20s I had a battery of medical tests to rule out brain tumors, etc. MRIs, CT scans, cranial pressure tests.. all showed nothing wrong. My GP prescribed me T3s (acetaminophen/paracetamol with codeine) but that was about it. I then went to a holistic doctor who did comprehensive allergy tests and determined that I was highly sensitive to sodium nitrate as well as several sulfur compounds. By avoiding those substances, I reduced my migraine frequency to 1-2 a month, which was a nice improvement, and then slowly improved on that.
Chronic lack of sleep (4-5h per night on multiple consecutive nights), stress, certain chemical odors such as bathroom cleaning agents, and flickering lights can still easily trigger a migraine, but by intentionally avoiding those triggers I was able to reduce the frequency to 3-4 a year, which is a huge improvement. Lately however, they've been coming back more frequently. I've had 3 in the last 2 weeks, including one yesterday which was so bad I couldn't see out of my right eye.

Over the past few weeks I've been reading more about blood flow and brain inflammation, more for general brain health than anything specific, but I've found the core of my new regimen to be remarkably effective against migraines too. I tested it on the 3 most recent ones, with interesting results.

The first 2 weren't that bad, but I had no time for any downtime at all that day as I was heading out to several important meetings. I took the stack and was feeling fantastic by the time I got to my first meeting about 30 minutes later. The next day I had another migraine, and again the stack cleared the symptoms in 25-30 minutes. Later that night I was at a board meeting and had a ridiculous amount of brain fog.. it took me a while to realize why, but then I remembered that I'd averaged 4 hours of sleep a night for the previous 2 nights. That night I slept 7h and felt great. With yesterday's migraine, I woke up with a "flickering aura" distortion, sort of like a blind spot crossed with a strobe light for those not familiar with the effect, nausea and intense pain in my head. I took the first part of the stack and within 20 minutes the majority of the symptoms had eased.. I then made a cup of coffee and within minutes of drinking that the migraine was gone completely.

I've experimented with the ingredients separately, and have found that they are all necessary to achieve the effect. It's a very basic stack, and very likely similar to supplements many of you are already taking.

• B100 Complex (Jamieson brand)
• 2g fish oil (Swiss Naturals brand.. it was all I had available)
• 16oz coffee (medium roast with some cream for a fat source)

I get why the coffee helped, and the fish oil improved blood flow and reduced inflammation.. but I'm still not clear on the role the B vitamins are playing. I have tested that the effect doesn't work without them though.

Thoughts?

[@now]

Migraine can be triggered by certain foods etc. It is not too far of a stretch to imagine the absence (for whatever reason) of certain foods to trigger migraine. I've found that both noopept and oxiracetam decrease migraine frequency.

[Raza]

My girlfriend had a migraine once, while we were partying. We cleared it in a matter of seconds with three good wiffs of poppers. "Isopentyl Nitrite", the bottle says.

[ta5]

I used to have bad migraines. They would last around 2-3 hours and be very painful with nausea and fully (but briefly) blinding aura. After the 2-3 hours, I would still feel crummy for 48 hours. There's no way I can continue to work though one. I have to go lay down and be sick until it's over. I feel sorry for anyone who has them.

Different people have different triggers. There's no question about that, so I can only talk about my experience.

Sodium seemed to be a trigger for me. At the worst, I was having 1 to 2 per week for months. This was more than 15 years ago. I don't remember the reason I even decided to try it, but I cut out all sources of high sodium, just to see. I noticed I was eating several grams a day from pickles, lunch meats, frozen dinners, canned fish, etc. After I cut out sodium, I didn't have another migraine for almost a year. The frequency changed abruptly from 1-2 per week to 1-2 per year, or a little more. I can't say for sure it was the sodium and not something else in those foods, but whatever it was, I was happy they stopped. I don't think it was nitrates, since I had tried stopping them specifically before with no benefit. There's a study on dehydration triggering migraines, so there might be something going on there in connection with sodium. A few years later I stopped paying close attention to what I was eating, and inadvertently started eating some high sodium foods, and then started having some migraines. I looked at what I was eating, and sure enough, I was eating way more sodium than I though. I cut those foods out, and the migraines stopped again.

I attribute Taurine to stopping them completely. Taurine is awesome. There's evidence it can help for epilepsy. There are similarities between epilepsy and migraines, or there must be since so many epilepsy treatments happen to be effective for migraine prevention. Taurine is a membrane stabilizer, and this is a feature of several epilepsy medications.

Propranolol was also effective as a prophylactic before I found the Taurine. I was taking it for another reason, but found I didn't have any migraines while I was on it. It's a well known migraine prophylactic.

I tried a couple abortive treatments, that you take to stop a migraine after it starts. They didn't work for me. It seems like my migraines are too powerful and unstoppable once they start. I didn't try the poppers though. :-)

High-dose vitamin B2 should be effective. There are lots of studies on it. I never had a chance to test it since I had already cut the sodium and added the Taurine.

Magnesium and fish oil should also help.

Things along the way that triggered migraines: Citrulline, and also Lithium. I won't touch either of those again. The only migraines I have had in many years have been from these two. It's interesting that Citrulline is a trigger for me, but Arginine is not.

[bl4ck1ce]

Just a quick update. On Friday night I had a girl over, and she developed a migraine due to fatigue. (almost wish I could claim responsibility for that.. lol..) She'd flown home from a vacation in Asia the day before and was still very jetlagged, but wanted to see me. She said she was going to go home to sleep it off, but I gave her my migraine stack and told her to see what happened.. much to her amazement, within 20 minutes her head felt fine. She described the same feeling I get from the combo, a sensation of a blockage being washed away through a pipe, followed by an immediate sense of pressure relief.

I'm eager to try this with a better quality omega 3 source!