Need Help With A Health Issue

Off Topic
1

Hello Everyone,

I am sure this post will be relocated to a more appropriate forum, but I couldn?t decide which one to post it in. If you have the patience, please read.

I am 29 years old. I have suffered from headaches since I was 12. They have been diagnosed as migraines and I have a prescription for imitrex, which does work, to use as necessary. The headaches are starting to change characteristics and are getting to the point where I am getting two of them, on back to back days, about every ten days. My current doctors, as well as all of the ones I have seen since I was 12, are being of little help. I am having to take my imitrex too frequently, and they are talking about putting me on Topamax as a preventative.

My headaches are on the left side of my head with a sharp pain behind my left eye. When I have a headache the sinus that is above my left nostril is always involved and the left side of my nose is pretty much closed off. Also, when having a headache, I can press on my left eye and hear a squishing sound going on behind it. I am sure it is not the air between my hand and eye, I can actually feel pressure going on behind the eye. There is also lots of cracking and popping in my neck when I have a headache. At its worst I get sweaty, clammy to the touch, and have tingling in my fingers.

When I was younger I had MRI?s, and EEG?s, that concluded no aneurism and that my brain was OK.

I live in Houston, TX. Does anyone have any suggestions or thoughts? Any experience with doctors that might be able to help? I would like to explore the sinus connection further, but can?t get any doctors to take me seriously. Does this sound like a food allergy of some kind? I have tried exploring that idea, but wasn?t able to identify any triggers.

Something else funny. I can tell when I am going to get one because the day before the headache I feel great. Almost a manic episode. I am confident, getting things done, making big plans for the future, then the next day BAM! This also makes me question a possible brain chemistry thing.

Thanks to anyone who is willing/able to help. These things are really starting to wear me down, and life is pretty much sucking at this point. I can make it through a day as long as I have my imitrex and Excedrin Migraine handy, but I know it is not a good thing.

Any help from the T-Nation community would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Everyone,

Jason Maxwell

2

Well, if you already explored Western medicine and it didn’t help, you may as well try something else. Say… see if you can find a competent acupuncturist, not a New Age quack, but an honest specialist in plain old chinese acupuncture. See if that helps.

Just help yourself with a double-dip of caution when choosing the person you’ll be working with.
Sometimes those people can help with weird issues that cannot be solved otherwise. No guarantees though, but… well, it can’t hurt either.

Good luck.

3

dude, what do you eat? try out Berardi style eating for a while, may be dehydration, blood sugar issues and get a food allergy test

also the brain diet may help, available on US amazon

4

Thes headaches could be very serious, something as simple as referred pain or aa tumour.
Go IMMEDIATELY to your doctor and demand a full examination with X-ray, the works!!
Don’t be put off, if your doctor won’t do it, get another doctor!

And find a good naturopath, it’s good to have one on board your health ship.
Good luck.

5

I ve had horrible migrains all my life until I was 13, I am not talking about the ones where it hurts you take a pill and feel all better. I am talking about the ones where I passed out from them from time to time they were so bad and vomited. ( I was pretty weak as a kid)

It all got a hell of a lot better when I moved to a colder state (not sure if it had anything to do with that) and started eating healthier. As a kid I ate nothing but sugar crap (No I wasnt fat, I was skinny as bone). Then a few years of eating healthy I figured I might as well put nutrition to good use so I started working out and got even better. btw all the doctors I went to said I had a lot of pressure in my skull or some crap that why the headaches were there and that Id have it for all of my life. HA proved them wrong.

Anyways the point of the whole story is try to eat healthier and see what happens. Couldnt hurt right? Oh by healthier I mean stuff like lots of veggies and unproccessed food, btw try to cut out coffe if you drink any, that crap to this day gives me headaches.

6

See a chiropractor AND get tested for food allergies.

A little acupuncture won’t hurt, either.

7

We can all guess and suggest things but you should go to your doctor and demand to get taken care of. A good neurologist may be in order if you have not been to one. In fact regular doctors get very little training on a great many things. My own doctor admitted this and I am now seeing a neurologist and have things under controll.

8

Hi, I don’t post a lot but what you’re telling reminds me of what I’ve been through.

Non-stop headaches, great pressure in the head focused on one point…

The neurologists also make me take a MRI but everything was clean.

So I went to see an osteopath who help relieve the tension and pressure and prescribed me some exercices for my posture, tongue and eye muscles.

So I would say get a postural assesment by an osteopath, posturologist or kinesiologist. It sounds weird but they were three neurlogist around me and nobody had a clue what to do. And that guy fixed me in 3 months.

-Guig

9

Hello,

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone that has offered feedback. Thanks for taking the time.

Jason

10

Try to find a neurologist who has training from either England or Germany.

My son has had migraines with aura since he was 6 (he’s 12 now). His milieu preceeding the aura is very negative and oppositional. This is followed by the aura then a killer headache. They started immediately after he had heart surgery. We were told it happens after heart surgery but “they’ll go away” in about 6 months. They didn’t. They got more frequent and intense to the point of 2-3 times a week every week.

Multiple neurologists later we were meeting with one who said he didn’t have any more options available but he had heard of some success with fever few but didn’t have enough training himself to help.

Off we went to research and found this article:
Murphy JJ, Heptinstall S, Mitchell JRA. Randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial of feverfew in migraine prevention. Lancet 1988;2:189-92.

We started him on mygra-few. It was very effective. He was able to go months without a migraine. He chose to stop taking the feverfew and the migraines would return. He chose to restart. This happened 3 times. We don’t have any problems getting him to take the feverfew anymore.

I suggest finding a neurologist with German or English training because feverfew is presecribed in Europe quite often while it is barely heard of in the States. There are a few other herbs and supplements that help including: magnesium, butterburr and CoQ10.

Here are some additional references to feverfew including 3 double-blind studies demonstrating efficacy:

  1. Makheja AN, Bailey JM. A platelet phospholipase inhibitor from the medicinal herb feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium). Prostagland Leukotrienes Med 1982;8:653-60.

  2. Heptinstall S, White A, Williamson L, Mitchell JR… Extracts of feverfew inhibit granule secretion in blood platelets and polymorphonuclear leukocytes. Lancet 1985;1:1071-4.

  3. Awang DVC. Parthenolide: The demise of a facile theory of feverfew activity. J Herbs Spices Medicinal Plants 1998;5:95-8.

  4. Johnson ES, Kadam NP, Hylands DM, Hylands PJ. Efficacy of feverfew as prophylactic treatment of migraine. Br Med J 1985;291:569-73.

  5. Murphy JJ, Heptinstall S, Mitchell JRA. Randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial of feverfew in migraine prevention. Lancet 1988;2:189-92.

  6. Palevitch D, Earon G, Carasso R. Feverfew(Tanacetum parthenium) as a prophylactic treatment for migraine: A double-blind placebo-controlled study. Phytother Res 1997;11:508-11.

  7. De Weerdt CJ, Bootsma HPR, Hendriks H. Herbal medicines in migraine prevention. Phytomed 1996;3:225-30.

  8. Brown DJ. Herbal Prescriptions for Better Health. Rocklin, CA: Prima Publishing, 1996, 91-5.

  9. Brown DJ. Herbal Prescriptions for Better Health. Rocklin, CA: Prima Publishing, 1996, 91-5.

Another thing to consider is not the brain but the heart:

There is a correlation between migraines and a hole between chambers of the heart. One of my son’s neurologists mentioned this relationship relative to my son’s heart situation. During his next echo I’m going to have them check this out. The focus has always been on his valve problem…maybe it was missed and could get repaired during his next surgery.

Good luck. You have my heart felt sympathy as I’ve sat hours with my son’s pain with little I could do about it but use guided imagery and Benadryl to help him get to sleep.