r/headache

Hi everyone! Long post follows. Offering my own experience using a mind/body approach to get out of chronic migraine. I can’t promise it will work for everyone, but it has been incredibly effective for me, after about 30 years of suffering to different degrees, and decades of personal migraine research and experimentation.

I have had migraines since being a teenager (almost 46 now), and they have gone chronic at various points. Most recently, have been dealing with chronic migraine for about a year and a half - it slowly ramped up over a 4 year period which included changes in where I lived, my work, and my relationships. I have been on disability for almost a year. I have tried anything and everything, and spent a lot of money I really didn’t have trying everything I could to treat my migraines - a CEFALY device, physio, acupuncture, Bowen, massage, Osteo, botox, naturopathy, etc. I did have some success a number of years ago after being forced to quit my job, when a naturopath prescribed a strict anti-inflammatory diet which I did for 6 months and combined with physio, massage, Osteo, supplements and regular exercise. It was very effective, but it was basically a full time job l, took several months before it worked, and I’ve never been able to do it all again or get the same results.

After a 2 year wait to see a neurologist again, and trialing half a dozen different preventatives (I’ve also been on amitriptyline since 2007), I got to try what I was told is the best treatment for chronic migraine available (according to my neurologist/headache specialist), a combo of Botox and anti-CGRP injections. I tried Emgality. It cost me a lot of money as my insurers won’t cover CGRP meds, and it did very little. I went from 6 days of pain a week to 5. The neuro said it wasn’t worth continuing the CGRP after 2 months. At this point I was very discouraged and pretty much Sure medications were not going to get me out of this. I was also terrified that when my disability ran out, if nothing shifted, I’d have to quit my new job and abandon any type of full time work involving computers and/or in a large office.  

I had also done a chronic-pain self management course via the local pain clinic, which changed my understanding of chronic pain and my migraines including all my various triggers and symptoms.

Around that time I watched Nicole Sachs lecture via the Migraine World Summit (big fan of the summit!). She talked about how chronic pain is caused by a nervous system stuck in fight-or-flight long term, as a result of repressed emotions. I had read John Sarno and Gabor Mate on similar mind/body stuff and it had resonated, but I was left without a road map. She provided a road map.

I immediately ordered and read her book (Mind Your Body), started listening to her podcasts, and took a month alone in a cottage to start doing the work. The work is essentially believing in the mind/body connection and journaling 20 minutes at a time, followed by 10 mins meditation. I have journaled off and on my whole life, but Sach’s Journal Speak method is different and very specific. Sachs lays this all out very clearly in her podcast (The Cure for Chronic Pain) and her YouTube series - Healing Yourself.

I started journaling twice a day but switched to once a day after a week or two. I note that I am very privileged to have had access to this time/space, but it isn’t strictly necessary to change anything in your daily circumstances other than adding the work and believing. 

Honestly, I still cannot quite believe how effective it was. In that month, and starting almost immediately, I had HUGE relief. I only had one migraine and a few days of mild headache in an entire month - and this is after a year of 5-6 days a week of head pain/migraines.  I was even able to start exercising again, which i had been unable to do for over a year because ANY upper body movement (including the gentlest yin yoga) was triggering migraines. 

I was nervous about whether I could maintain this improvement when returning to “real life” with all its obligations, distractions, and stressors. And when I returned to the city, moved back in with my partner, and started socializing again I had a bit of a relapse - 1 week of headaches and migraines at something closer to the old frequency. But I realized I’d also stopped journaling, so I started and again, almost immediately, saw huge improvement.

I am totally amazed. I am only a few months in, and have yet to return to work, but my life has completely changed. It doesn’t happen this fast for everyone, and I may face more in the way of relapses, or perhaps the pain showing up in different ways. But I no longer am experiencing daily head pain and have virtually no migraines, as long as I keep up with journaling. I have even been to parties, drunk alcohol, started eating gluten and dairy again. I feel like a totally different person.

I stopped taking by topirimate which was prescribed after the CGRP drug failure, but i am still on amitriptyline (been on it about 19 years at this point and it’s really horrible to come off it for me), and I have to decide if I’m quitting Botox as my next scheduled injections are the beginning of next month. I think I will. I plan to start back to work next month (part time at first, working my way back to full time gradually) and will keep up my journaling. I am now doing it only every couple days or as needed.

I cannot recommend enough giving this approach a genuine,  determined effort. The results for me have been very nearly miraculous thus far.

Happy to chat with anyone else trying or considering doing this work! Obviously, this is only my experience, and I offer it in the hopes that it might help someone else. I’m sure many of you will be skeptical, I was in the past, but I was desperate, and had tried just about everything else. I do believe you have to be truly ready in order for this to work. Hopefully it doesn’t require total despair.

The journaling is intense at times, but I feel like I’m learning a tremendous amount about myself and my relationships which would be valuable even without the cessation of pain!
And besides purchasing her book (maybe $30 CAD?) , the process has been totally free.

* I have posted this as a comment on a few migraines threads because I wish I’d known about this approach sooner!

Two years ago, I was having migraine attacks three times a week. Almost every other day, I was completely out of commission.

​At the time, I was working for an MNC and grinding for a promotion. The lifestyle was a perfect storm for chronic migraines:

​Terrible work-life balance with late-night calls.

​Constant, high-level stress.

​No proper sleep cycle and zero exercise.

​Heavy stress-eating (I was eating buckets of ice cream and way too much junk food).

​After months of this grind, I had a sudden realization: my manager had absolutely no intent of promoting me for the next year. That was the moment I dropped the rope.

I decided to take my work lightly for two weeks and put all that energy into getting myself back on track in terms of my life and health. As someone who was overweight at the time, I made some drastic but necessary changes:

​- I cut out sugar and sugary drinks completely. No junk food, nothing packaged, only home-cooked meals.

- ​I only ate rice on alternating weeks to cut down on my carbohydrate intake. Consumes Jowar roti or Ragi roti instead.

​- I started walking for 15 minutes before and after every single meal, and eventually started going for jogs.

​After those strict first two weeks, I allowed myself to occasionally eat out, but I kept the junk food cut down to a fraction of what it used to be.

Today, I'm at a 24.5 BMI. safely back in the normal range.

While the lifestyle changes helped immensely, I still needed to figure out exactly why the migraines were happening. I started tracking my trigger foods and discovered a major culprit: Preservative E282 (Calcium propionate). Any product (usually breads, packaged) I consumed with this preservative triggered an attack. Surprisingly, this is also naturally found in cheese, which explained why cheese was another major trigger for me.This preservative is restricted/banned in most countries but India allows it.

I eventually quit my job and moved abroad for my Master's degree.

Between the lifestyle changes, dropping the toxic job, and avoiding my trigger foods, my migraine frequency has plummeted to just 1 attack in the last 6 months.

For context on my current baseline: I am a pure vegetarian, I don't smoke, and I don't drink alcohol.

Along the way, I also learned that imbalances in minerals like potassium and magnesium can contribute to headaches. To combat this, I devised a specific breakfast smoothie recipe packed with the right nutrients to keep the headaches at bay.

​I’ll post the exact smoothie recipe in the comments below, if anyone is interested!

I hope my story helps someone else out there who is stuck in the chronic migraine cycle. It takes time, but figuring out your triggers and putting your health first is worth it.

Trigger foods:

I found that this preservative is used in almost all breads.

Pizzas, burgers, etc.

I found that only Pizza 4Ps didnt trigger headaches, while everything else did, pizza hut, dominoes. Burgers too: KFC, Burger King etc. And every packaged bread too. Recently found most of them have this preservative in them.

Cheese apparently has this chemical naturally in it. This too when taken in more quantity triggered a headache.

Skipping meals

Indigestion.

I’ve been on nurtec for 6-7 weeks now and while it does help a little it’s not exactly preventing my migraine attacks they still break through and affect my life tremendously missing work and social events etc. so I’ve seen most ppl step it up with this one since it’s daily , what’s your experience on it? I don’t see many positive experiences with the side effects one being anxiety which is kind of odd but everyone is different of course please and thank you!

Hi everyone. I’ve been a silent follower of this sub for a while now. I think I have cluster headaches, but my PCP diagnosed me with migraines. I’d love to hear from people who have experienced cluster headaches.

Symptoms/Background:

I am 24 F and I have been experiencing headaches for as long as I can remember; however, they seem to be getting more severe as time goes on. I have been taking Topiramate every night and Sumatriptan as needed for years, but I don’t know if they’re helping.

The pain comes out of nowhere, pretty much every day usually right when I wake up or right before I go to bed. It is on the right side of my head, on my temple, behind my right eye, down the right side of my nose (almost feels like in my sinuses), and at the base of my neck on the right side. Sometimes it’s short lived, sometimes it lasts all day and I can’t get it to go away. Sitting still usually makes it worse, so I have to get up and try to do something to get my mind off the pain.

I won’t get any headaches for months and I’ll feel great, so I think I’m fine and just overreacting. Then one day, they’ll randomly come back, I’ll get them every day, and I find myself terrified of when the next attack might be. I’ve gotten in a car accident once because a headache came on while driving and I couldn’t concentrate. I’ve had to go to urgent care several times because the pain was so bad and I couldn’t get it to go away. Sometimes the pain is so bad I get nauseous and I can’t keep anything down until the headache goes away. I have a lingering headache now while typing this 😅

If anyone has any idea what kind of headaches these are or any advice for me, I’d really appreciate it. Thank you so much!

For the past 5 days I’ve been experiencing terrible and worsening head pain. Im honestly not 100% sure it’s a migraine because I don’t have the typical light sensitivity I get with them and its full head. After 3 days I caved and went to the doctor. They did blood work which came back fine. I kept asking my doctor what to do if it just continued to worsen. She gave me the same zombified “take advil every 6 hours” statement. Like ya no shit.

The following day I wake up feeling way worse. 8/10 pain. Worst headache of my life. Pooping hurt. Shaking my head hurts, my eyes hurt with pressure. It’s unbearable and the advil is barely helping. So I go to the ER, explain everything. Stress the duration and worsening nature. How back it felt. They give me an IV and send me on my way.

I’m at my wits end. I can’t work, go out with my girlfriend, get chores done. I’m just in bed all day hoping the pain will subside. I don’t know what to do anymore. I have an ENT appointment in 4 days so I’m praying it’s a sinus problem but I’ve had no congestion at all.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

Does anyone else get a headache after each golf round? Did you used to get them and if so how did you get rid of getting them?

I drink at least 48oz of water with an electrolyte packet in it and eat multiple energy bars each round and still get them and looking for any help that this subreddit can offer!

26 M

As I cry in my bed right now with my dried eyes in my cheek, I do sincerely feel like my whole life is over. I don’t know if I’m looking for sympathy, empathy, reassurance or tips but here I am just typing. It’s been 6 months since I’ve had this dull aching headache which sometimes in the back of my head, sometimes feels like someone is drawing on my head and sometimes get constant tingling around my nose, top of the head and back of head.

I’ve tried amitryplitine 40mg, did absolutely nothing. I’ve tried Propanyol did nothing. I’ve used my cpap machine for 2 months and It has done nothing. I would give all my savings away in a heart beat to try make this better and for life worth living. I am currently 2 weeks into atogepant 60mg and 1 week into 75mg of Pregablin and I feel no difference. I feel so hopeless. I live chronically online trying to look for guidance. I used to walk a lot and get fresh air which would help a tad mentally but obviously did nothing for symptoms. I no longer work, feel like I’m holding my partner back from living her life since we cannot move in together etc.

2 Neurologists and 1 ENT professional I spoke to have said it’s a Daily Headache / Migraine but as everyone knows here that phrase is so broad.

I would appreciate any other pointers. I know there is Botox, possibly Nerve Blocks to see if it could be neurelegia, acupuncture, dry needling and physically therapy. However I do not have any neck pain at all which makes me think it’s not that. I’m not asking for a diagnosis, I’m just asking for more things I can try :(

About 4 days ago I hit my head on a pendant light in my kitchen. We used to have a table under it so I walked into it and hit my head pretty good. I got a headache later that evening that hasn’t really gone away since. I tried Advil and Tylenol and Aleve. It’s not as bad in the morning but gets worse throughout the day. I have an appt scheduled with my primary but just looking for advice or if anyone was in a similar situation and how it turned out. TIA!