All my life, I have had severe migraine. It was at its worst during my higher studies and beginning of my service career. I need not mention that I tried so many different types of medications but without any results worth the name. I had, therefore, to come to grips with my enemy in my own way.
I would like to share with my fellow migraine-sufferers, things that helped me reducing the frequencies of its onslaught on me.
1. Acceptance — Accept yourself with migraine. We are who we are with migraine.
I can score 90 in an event of exam or work or pleasure whatever counts, without migraine and 60 with migraine. I consider myself a 70 — something scorer. Make goals and plan of your life in accord with this.
2. Ambition — Mostly, people with migraine are highly ambitious. We need to lower our ambition. This does not mean having no ambition or no purpose in life, in fact, that will worsen the migraine attacks. We need just to lower the level of our ambitions and fuel it step by step as we move forward in life.
3. Face it with certainty — There is no escape from situations where you have to perform with migraine. Always plan in advance and prepare well. Migraine affects spontaneity. If you are well prepared and have practiced well, it will cover up the momentary, non-spontaneity. This means extra work, extra study during non-migraines times to make up with the time lost in parrying migraine. This also means making your pleasure plans flexible. Account for a day-off due to migraine so that it does not come as pleasure spoiler.
4. Alertness-level — Make your alertness level to basics if your social environment allows for example, if you are walking down a street, follow traffic signals and be on the alert at your safety level that you are not hit by any vehicle. If we are over cautious or over alert, it stiffens our muscles only to aggravate the migraine. And, also, maintain correct body postures while sitting, standing, walking, sleeping and doing any physical activity.
5. Breathing — Try breathing exercise and yoga. Monitor your breathing throughout the day weather you are taking full breath or not. Take deep breath at time if you are under stress. The flow of oxygen into the brain is very important. You will be surprised to know that many a times we do not breathe in a correct manner like when we breathe in our stomach should be filled out with air.
6. Surrounding — It is important to bring awareness of migraine to your surroundings. Share articles about migraine to your family, friends, colleagues and supervisors even at workplace. Your unplanned leaves/absence due to migraine will be questioned at workplace in one way or the other. Besides having your medical history, diagnosis reports etc, also, be open to share the dynamics of migraine through talking its vagaries and limitations. The constructive response from the surrounding will help putting up a matching fight with migraine. Please be careful that you do not show your vulnerability in professional set-up!
7. Conditioning — Be aware of change in the atmospheric temperature natural or artificial. Sunglasses, umbrella, cap and the like should be your armour when you have to step out in the sun, particularly, in the summer. Woollen cap is a must in winters. Make sure you dry your hair if you are taking head bath in winter or rainy weather. Do not expose yourself frequently from air-conditioned place to outside weather. Your body is not able to condition itself in such circumstances and it aggravates the migraine.
8. Follow — Take all the precautions recommended by your doctor, positively. The most common recommendations are eating fresh food, avoiding processed food, avoiding smoking and drinking, having proper sleep and maintaining disciplined active life style. They all need to be followed because they do work in your case.
9. Diary — Keep a diary with your minute daily details of time, type and duration for sleep, food, travel, stress or menstrual cycle for minimum six months to one year. Mark each migraine event with its severity level and the pattern it follows. This will help you in identifying migraine triggers, — causes and items that aggravate it. You will know what needs to be avoided and what to be accepted for what duration. This will be your own personal recommendation for yourself!
10. Other body problems — Frequency of migraine is increased when there is some other problem faced by the body. If there is no change in our daily routines, stress-level and still, frequency of migraine has increased, we need to look for the real cause. The epicenter of migraine had changed for me at times with high frequencies like lower jaw to eye balls. My wisdom tooth was growing in reverse direction to the root of the adjacent tooth and I had lost my peripheral vision in respective situations. Visiting the dentist and eye specialist helped. Similarly, if migraines are happening at certain day after or before menstrual periods, it’s wise to have a full check up by your gynecologist.
Migraine may perhaps, rule our life but definitely cannot ruin it. It’s better to bend than break or even better to blend than bend.
