Migraine: My Solution
Posted on 23 February 2010
The migraine affects different aspects of your life: work and productivity, social relationship as result it affects the quality of living. I wrote about my migraine in a previous post, in short I have migraine with aura accompanied by vertigo for 15 to 30 minutes and after that a headache for 6 to 24 hour. The migraine trigger for me is little or too much sleeping and stress makes it happens more frequently.
I’ve got that information by taking notes for three months. The solution could be just trying to sleep eight hours but sometimes it’s inevitable because of the crunch time at work or personal project, going to a social event, etc. etc. I want to avoid any dependence of pharmacological drugs so what can I do? I tried different ways (founded in internet) to solve this problem: going to the gym, eating an ice cream after the aura, etc, etc. and nothing works for me.
In 2008, when I was thinking about my migraine problem I read Pragmatic Thinking & Learning by Andy Hunt. It’s a really good book and I like the way Andy explains how our mind works using computer metaphors. So I got an idea,… I’ve been involved in software development since I was ten years old so maybe if I thinking about the migraine as a software problem (bug) could help me to find a solution.
I spent a whole week thinking about the migraine as a bug. I used the trial and error method to verify my ideas for some months until I got this:
The migraine starts with 15 to 30 minutes with an aura, the problem is the amount of wrong information between the systems involved (brain and eyes) because I see something (aura) that doesn’t exist and my brain knows that so maybe it requests again and again information to the eyes. That could explain why after the aura disappears the headache is worse just behind the eyes because both systems were overloaded.
I can’t upgrade those systems (sadly) so I tried to find a way to filter the wrong information: closing my eyes, going to lightly room, etc, etc,… and one day I had a headache attack while I was reading a book and what I used to do is stop reading because reading with a little vertigo is quite complicated but this time I decided to continue and tried to concentrate in the reading and not paying attention to the aura. When the aura disappears I don’t have a headache!!!!
I was surprised about this event so I took my notes and write about it. Then every time I had an aura, I started to read anything and after the aura disappear most of the time I didn’t have a headache. My conclusion was:
To filter the wrong information I have to force my brain to pay attention to other thing (reading a book) instead of the aura.
The next month I tried to find other ways beside reading a book for avoiding the headache so with practice now when I have an aura I can pay attention to other things like the street, the computer, colors, etc. and don’t have headache. I have 15-30 minutes with the aura but I don’t have headaches for 6-24 hours and that’s improved dramatically my quality of living.
I hope to have time to write other post about this technique in detail. If you have the same type of migraine you could tried what I write here, maybe it could work maybe not but it could help you to find a solution for your case.
1 Response to Migraine: My Solution
Wow, I love how you trusted yourself and your tried and true methods and took the time to figure out what worked for you. Very interesting. I can’t wait to read more of what your personal research revealed about your migraines. I think we, more than doctors or other experts, hold the key to unlocking what will release us from migraine pain. And that it varies from person to person. Such a great job analyzing yourself and tracking what works for you!