Special occasions often include shopping, wrapping, baking, packing, traveling, cleaning, decorating…it’s enough to make our heads spin…and that’s without the added complication of migraine!! So how do we combat the effects of the added stress from all of the holiday craziness? It seems like a simple thing to say plan ahead, but when we break things down and become intentional about how we get things done, it can help our holidays run more smoothly. Before we get into the nitty gritty of how to manage all of the craziness that comes with special occasions, I think it’s important to remember a very important idea that is often hard to put…
Migraine and Parties: Navigating Holidays
The holiday season is in full swing and we, and our migraine, will be heading out to family and office parties in the coming days and weeks. What is the best way to navigate a party where you don’t have any control over the food or drink? Safest cocktails or mocktails to order? What food should you look for in a buffet? What do you do at an office pot luck? Here are some of our best tips for how to survive the holiday party season. The Cocktail/Mocktail The Mocktail has become quite the rage over the past couple of years. You can find all sorts of recipes for them…
Traveling With Migraine: Navigating Holidays
This blog contains affiliate links. As an Amazon affiliate, we earn a small percentage of profit from qualifying purchases at not cost to you. Traveling with migraine can be…challenging. There are so many problematic aspects to it. The excitement, extensive planning and packing, remembering to pack all of our meds and supplements, and planning for head friendly meals away from home are just a few. I have found that if I plan ahead, I can mitigate some of the normal triggers that happen when I travel. Building The ‘Perfect’ Plan Anyone with migraine knows there is no such thing as the perfect traveling plan. The best laid plans are usually…
How to Manage Light and Sound Sensitivity With Migraine: Part 2 – Concerts
Photo Credit: Eileen Zollinger Light and sound sensitivity are two of the most consistent problems I have with migraine (read Part 1 here). And not just during an attack but between attacks as well. I have found I need to have some tools in my toolkit to be able to enjoy certain events such as baseball games, movies and especially concerts. For The Love Of Music I love music. It feeds my soul in so many ways. One of my biggest regrets is that I don’t play an instrument (I know it’s not too late). I sing in my car with the best of them. There is nothing like your…
How to Manage Light and Sound Sensitivity with Migraine
Light and sound sensitivity with migraine have plagued me for years and I have had to learn to manage both conditions during attacks and in between. This is not an uncommon problem to have. While approximately 85% of people with migraine report sensitivity to light during an attack and about 80% sensitivity to sound (Harriet & Schedt, 2014), almost the same percentages report the same sensitivities in between attacks. The migraine population is coping with migraine symptoms, sometimes on a daily basis. Managing At Home To manage light and sound sensitivity during a migraine attack at home is fairly straightforward. I will typically take my migraine cocktail. A triptan would…
Does Fear of a Migraine Attack Hold You Back?
Does fear of a migraine attack hold you back from making plans or doing things you love? Do you have a doubt monster that lives inside your head? One that ticks off the reasons why we can’t go…wherever? I know exactly how this feels. Migraine has been my near constant companion for most of my life. Even on the days that I don’t have what I call an ‘active attack’, I have reminders that she’s around. Things like tinnitus, aural fullness, unexpected dizziness, stabbing pains out of nowhere and random light sensitivity. Most days, these symptoms are in the background and I don’t notice them like I used to. If…
Overcoming Chronic Migraine – My 18 Year Battle
I have been encouraged to look back at my chronic migraine journey and to share my experiences to hopefully help others that are on a similar path. This is a rather painful exercise. Not because of where I am now, or even where I have traveled. I think I look back on the 18 years of chronic and mostly intractable migraine and think how different my life might have been without it. Migraine As A Thief When I went back to school, would I have been able to finish becoming a Physician Assistant, as planned? How much more involved could I have been with my kids’ activities? And don’t even…
How to Recognize Migraine Baseline and Reintroduce Foods After an Elimination Diet
The migraine brain is said to be hyper responsive to its surrounding environment. We respond with migraine attacks to things that people without migraine wouldn’t react to at all. The Bucket Theory was developed as a way to explain how difficult to control triggers (like hormones, stress and weather) fill up a portion of our bucket each day. While these triggers are hard to manage, the ones that we have some control over are the ones that we eat and drink each day. What Is An Elimination Diet? An elimination diet is a short term modification of diet that allows us to remove the ‘commonly known’ migraine triggers. These triggers…
The Treatment Pie – A Multimodal Approach to Treating Migraine
The Migraine Strong team developed the treatment pie as a way to illustrate the need to attack migraine using a multimodal approach. These nine slices represent the medical interventions and lifestyle changes that are known to best affect migraine outcomes. When applied together, they have a greater chance of reducing the frequency and severity of migraine attacks than any one slice alone. The slices are described below. The Treatment Pie: Medications – Refers to Acute medications (taken at the onset of an attack) and Preventive medications (taken daily to reduce the number of attacks). Rescue medications can also be prescribed to treat migraine symptoms even if they don’t abort an…
Four Ideas For When A Headache Specialist Isn’t An Option
If you have had chronic migraine for any length of time, you have heard some version of this…’you need to see a headache specialist.’ It’s a true statement. However, when the number of headache specialists in the United States is up to a whopping 569 to treat approximately four million chronic migraine patients…scheduling to see one of these specialists can feel like scoring slightly better odds than spotting a unicorn. The reason why we as a community are always talking about headache specialists is because migraine is a significant problem. Let’s break down some facts about migraine so we can all be on the same page. According to the World…
