Migraines, Headaches, and Cluster Headaches

I suffered from chronic daily migraine for years. I use to pop medicine like candy - I killed my stomach with Advil. I used to have anxiety over the headaches. They were ruining my life. I went to doctor to doctor to doctor without finding any real help.
After being diagnosed with Celiac and going gluten free, I have had a huge improvement in the number of headaches that I get. Now maybe one a month - sometimes they last 2 days - It sucks!
I also take Cymbalta which is an antideppressant found to have pain relieving components - I found that it helps
Steroids also help break the cycle and I will take them if I feel that they are starting to come back on a daily basis.

Yoga also helps.

My friend gets headaches like this from different food allergies that she has. Any kind of citrus like oranges or grapefruit, also peaches and others. It is not a "normal thing" to have a headache last for a few months! You've gotten lots of other good responses, but I know when I heard oranges could cause migraines I thought it was really weird. It could be a weird food allergy you never considered. I hope you find out what's causing them and hopefully get rid of them!

Migraines can have many causes - some avoidable, some not. Mine are mainly triggered by food additives. I know for sure I have to avoid MSG - it's in many prepared foods, junk foods and seasonings like Adobo & Sason. There are dozens of other food additives & preservatives I've become sensitive to over the years. I try to stick to foods that are close to the way nature made them or have very few ingredients. It's been process of elimination for me. I also can't have wine or anything with nitrates or sulfites. Take a close look at what's in everything you're eating from bread to crackers to canned anything to rice mixes and see if it helps to avoid the triggers that are in food. Best of luck to you.

PS - I once visited a family in Puerto Rico who had a teenage son who had suffered from migraines for years. When I got a migraine after eating food they prepared, I asked to see what seasoning had been used. Sure enough, they put Sason (sp?) in everything and had no idea what MSG was or that it was triggering the boy's migraines almost daily. They stopped using it and he never had another problem after that.

Do you have a carbon monoxide detector? My hubby is an HVAC tech and apparently loads of people get chronic migraines from exposure and have no idea.

C., my husband is prone to cluster headaches. They are a beast, to be sure. Are you seeing a neurologist? My husband was finally referred to one, who prescribed a combination of an oral steroid along with 5mg Zomig at the very beginning of the cluster headache, with a follow-up Zomig later in the day. For my husband, this is the ONLY thing that has worked. The steroid seems to break up the cluster, and the Zomig kills the headache.

I would also have your doctor run blood work for you. You need to be checked for any outlying medical conditions that could be causing these issues. For instance, I was getting migraines 1-2 times per week, increasing in severity and frequency as I went along, and when my doctor ran blood work, she found that I had extremely low thyroid. After having been treated for thyroid, I now only rarely have headaches, and almost never are they migraines. My mom was getting migraines all the time, and her doctor found that she is actually diabetic (which was a shock, because she is normal weight, eats right, exercises, etc - so nobody ever thought to check her for it before). So, there are a lot of medical conditions that can cause recurring migraines.

Good luck - I know how miserable all of this can be. I hope you can find relief!

Try a chiropractor. I go to Dr Frack in webb city

I used to get migraines and cluster headaches too. They were awful. What finally worked for me is following this webpage that lists off ingredients that cause headaches in a bunch of people. http://msgmyth.com/ If you click on the side bar under "Hidden ingredients" that is a good place to start. I almost never get any headaches anymore except when I mess up and eat something I shouldn't at a restaurant. My guess is this is pretty common and these ingredients are giving a LOT of people headaches!

Go see a neurologist - or a 'headache specialist'. They will take it seriously. I've found that regular family docs didn't take me seriously but when I visited a specialist, he was able to help.

I agree with you about popping pain pills, and too many can cause rebound headaches so you have to be careful.

The first thing a specialist will do is have you keep a headache diary so you can figure out what your triggers are. It tracks diet, stress, environment as it relates to your headaches.

Good luck -- I've suffered for many years and it's awful!

When my youngest was less than 1, she was diagnosed with Celiac disease. Because I was still nursing, I had to go on her gluten free diet, and stayed that way for about 2 years...I just quit nursing a few weeks ago.

Since then, I have had a few beers and a few glutinous foods (I went out for Chinese) and the migraines are back full force. While I was nursing and going GF for those 2 years, my migraines - while still present - were far less severe and more infrequent. I am tempted to remain on the GF diet for that reason alone.

There are other food related things that can cause migraines...caffeine (coffee), chocolate, cheese, wine, other alcohol, preservatives, artificial sweeteners, and MSG. I know you say you don't eat a lot of junk food, but I've found over these last two years in developing a diet for my youngest that a lot of what people eat and think is okay really is junk food.

If you'd like more help planning a diet free of migraine causing foods, to really give it a go, please PM me and I'd be more than happy to give lots of suggestions on what to eat and what to avoid.

Some things to try.
Make sure your teeth are well cared for every 6months by a good dentist.
Use all natural hygiene products where possible, and unscented.
Try going gluten, gmo free.
Alternate hot and cold packs on head and neck.
If you are overweight drop to your ideal or at least lose 10%.well
Do yoga for fixing blood flow.
Don't take narcotics, they only mask pain and don't solve the root problem and many end up with an addiction problem as well.
Get 8 hours of sleep a night, no tv, no lights.
Get massage,accupuncture as it helps blood flow and gives different stimulus.
Have a ct of head/sinuses as what some believe are chronic migraines are imbedded sinsus infections that require both antifungal and antibiotic treatment.
During headache do warm Nettie pot flushes.
I hope trying some or all makes you feel better.

A friend of mine used to suffer from migraines often. She would end up missing work because of them. She started going for regular massages and now rarely has a migraine. It is worth a shot and may work for you like it did her. I would love to have a reason to treat myself to regular massages :-)

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If you haven't seen a neurologist, I think that would be a good move. If you've done all the standard things and none of it works, it sounds like scans and bloodwork are in order. i hope you get answers and relief soon.

I would say start with an elimination diet...especially gluten. But also look into trigger points....,
http://www.pressurepointer.com/PressurePointerManual.pdf

It is amazing what muscle tension and trigger points can cause. Trigger points in the back can cause massive headaches and sinus type pain. Check out the charts to see if your pain fits...

One of my friends had tried everything also, and explored every possible suggestion. One Dr casually mentioned that he had heard of a study with vitamin D, and she went and got a good vitamin D supplement, and is astounded that she has not had a headache for almost 8 weeks now.

I started having migraines when I returned from military deployment overseas. I got them every month, for 2 days prior to, and 2 days into my period. They are called menstrual migraines, and are pretty common. They can hit you anytime during the month, but tend to keep a schedule. Some women have them at ovulation, some before their period, like me.

My mom sent me an article about how caffeine can mess up a woman's hormone levels, specifically estrogen and progesterone. I had started drinking coffee during my deployment! So, I stopped drinking coffee every morning, and stopped drinking Pepsi during the day at work. I never had a migraine again.

I can still have an occasional coffee or cola, but not every day. Hormones are built up in our system, and caffeine breaks them down over time. So it isn't the occasional bit of caffeine that will bother you, it's the every day habit.

I also found it amusing that the one thing that was causing my migraines is in EVERY over the counter migraine medicine. LOL. Derh.

I have bee getting chronic migraines for 27 years. Hav you kept a headache diary where you write down everything you eat, drink, sleep patters and quality, headache severity and treatment? Doing this is tedious, but can help you find triggers. I have food triggers, environmental triggers, and pattern triggers (for lack of a better term). Change in sleep and exercise patterns are big triggers for me. I do best avoiding all food triggers, keeping a stable sleep pattern (go to sleep and wake up at the same time everyday), exercising vigorously for an hour everday (it cased migraines at first, but I pushed through the initial period and it really helped), and trying to avoid environmenal triggers. If you are not on a preventive medicine you need to be on one; it may take a few different tries to find the right one, and you have to give them months (3+) to even see if they'll work. Also, limit yourself to 2 treatment days a week, this means ay kind of pain killer, and even caffine (which should be used as medicine and avoided otherwise). Regularly using medications (even tylenol) can cause mediction ovr use headache. I could probably think of more if I gave it time. Get a neurologist that specializes in headaches as most general doctor's don't know much about chronic migraine. Oh, avoid narcoic drugs as they cause headaches, doctor's always seem to try and precribe these for migraines and it just causes more. Also, many chronic migrainuers find going gluten free helps a lot.

Hope this helps someone. I am a wealth of information when it comes to migraines ad chronic migraines in anyone wants to know more; like I said, I have 27 years of experience.

If you eat or drink anything with aspartame (Nutrasweet) in it, stop. It gives many people migraines. Same for MSG - read labels on any processed foods you buy and if they contain it, don't buy it.
Also, if you are on Depo-Provera for birth control, it gives many women migraines.