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Health November 2013

Migraines 'n Medicine

By Lois Greene Stone

    Some don't even realize that there are three types of headaches: vascular, muscular, and inflammatory — and none of the three care how old the calendar says you are!

    Got a hurting head? Has a migraine ruined your normal routine? Do you get exasperated because you seem to do the "right" things, yet migraines still stir in your skull? Well, you may have a stomach-headache! No kidding.

    People see you as a fit person who works at maintaining health/strength/endurance/muscle tone, and can't look into your head. Some don't even realize that there are three types of headaches: vascular, muscular, and inflammatory — and none of the three care how old the calendar says you are! While you can't do much for an inflammatory one, since disease causes it, prevention may replace a pain pill for the other two.

    Vessels dilate and substances are released which cause swelling and intense pain. Vasoconstriction may be the result of a trigger-nerve impulse. Sometimes nausea and vomiting occur. Can vasoconstriction be prevented, and what's the stomach got to do with a migraine?

    If you sleep late on weekends, the delay from the body's accustomed breakfast hour may precipitate a headache. Lack of food might cause a mild deficiency of sugar in the blood and motivate an attack. So how can you prevent this problem? If you'd just get out of bed at the usual hour, drink some tomato juice and then go back to sleep, hypoglycemia may be prevented. Before you laugh, see if it works. Get up. Think of it as a bathroom stop except it'll be a juice-stop before more sleep.

    Anyone who consumes excessive amounts of caffeine can get head pain within 18 hours after abrupt withdrawal. One solution is to never withdraw caffeine. Sure, that might prevent the headache, but why not ease out caffeine and drink decaffeinated soft drinks, teas, coffees instead?

    Drugs are often necessary. One medicine prescribed to abort a migraine is ergotamine tartrate. It does constrict blood vessels, but you might hallucinate. LSD comes from ergot; got your attention now? Yes, ergotamine does work well on carotid arteries; unfortunately it also affects coronary arteries. And, there's more: taking this drug too often to turn off a migraine can cause a rebound headache reaction when it is stopped. So drugs for one "cure" are contraindicated due to side effects, and the body also rebels when over-medicated.

    How Can You Help Yourself?

    Regulating what and when to eat is preferable to pill popping, and the migraine-stomach relationship has been medically established. Didn't you read, years ago, about drinking white rather than red wine when you're migraine-prone? Internal Medicine Alert, way back in July 1988, noted that the Lancet medical journal had printed a confirmation that "...red wine, but not necessarily its alcohol or tyramine content, can precipitate migraine."

    Stress, tension, sinusitis, and dental disease also cause muscle-contraction headaches, and television commercials tell us to take extra-strength aspirin. So we gobble tablets to gain relief but upset our stomachs. For some, aspirin decreases uptake of vitamin C in leukocytes, then nutritional problems complicate matters. When possible, why not try hot showers, learn biofeedback, have physical therapy instead of ingesting aspirin? Get another caring person to massage your pulse points for just a few minutes; just having someone put hands-on sometimes relaxes.

    Back to those television commercials which claim the headache is halted as antacids act on the stomach. Hmm. Madison Avenue advertisers may finally have said something accurate ...headache from the stomach.

    So. Bottom line. Be kinder to the stomach and some of the aches above the neck may stop. Sleep, exercise, and diet carry no ill side effects –  unless you oversleep, call exercise pushing remote-control video knobs, and diet as caffeinated soda and salty chips.

     

    Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & soft-cover book anthologies. Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including 12 different divisions of The Smithsonian.