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?