Migraine Related Quotes

If it is a question of trepanning, I am your man. It is an operation I have performed scores, nay hundreds of times without losing a patient. That is to say except in a very few cases of vicious cachexy, where it was only done to please the relations. I trepanned Mrs Butcher for a persistent migraine, and she has never complained since.

PERIODIC MOOD-CHANGES We have already spoken of the affective concomitants of common migraines—elated and irritable prodromal states, states of dread and depression associated with the main phase of the attack, and states of euphoric rebound. Any or all of these may be abstracted as isolated periodic symptoms of relatively short duration—some hours, or at most two or three days, and as such may present themselves as primary emotional disorders. The most acute of these mood-changes, generally no more than an hour in duration, usually represents concomitants or equivalents of migraine aura. We may confine our attention at this stage to attacks of depression, or truncated manic-depressive cycles, occurring at intervals in patients who have previously suffered from attacks of undoubted (classical, common, abdominal, etc.) migraine.

brain and other nerve-related problems such as headaches from concussions, vascular dementia (dementia caused by blood vessel problems in the brain), migraines, Bell’s palsy (a paralysis of the facial nerve), and tinnitus (ringing of the ears). He emphasized he was influenced by research that had been done in Israel on light therapy and the brain. Dr. Shimon Rochkind, a neurosurgeon at Tel Aviv University, originally pioneered work using lasers to treat injuries in the peripheral nervous system, that is, all the nerves in the body except those in the brain and spinal cord. Injury to peripheral nerves can lead to problems sensing or moving.

rediscovered, a ketogenic diet is returning to mainstream acceptance and is again recognized as a highly effective therapy for seizure and neurologically related disorders. In fact, there are studies to show the strong benefits of ketogenic diets on virtually every manner of neurological disorder. Some examples of neurologic uses of a ketogenic diet other than epilepsy are migraines, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS), autism, brain tumors, depression, sleep disorders, schizophrenia, postanoxic brain injury, posthypoxic myoclonus glycogenosis type V, and narcolepsy, to name a few.

Marjan measured Bahar's unpredictable temperament according to the ancient and treasured Zoroastrian practice of gastronomic balancing, which pitted light and against dark, good against evil, hot against cold. Certain hot, or 'garm,' personalities tend to be quick to temper, exude more energy, and prompt all others around them to action. This energy often runs itself ragged, so to counter exhaustion, one must consume cold, or 'sard' foods, such as freshwater fish, yogurt, coriander, watermelon, and lentils. Most spices and meats should be avoided, for they only stoke the fires inside. (Tea, although hot in temperature, is quite a neutralizing element.) By contrast, for the person who suffers from too cold a temperament, marked by extreme bouts of melancholia and a general disinterest in the future, hot or 'garm' dishes are recommended. Foods such as veal, mung beans, cloves, and figs do well to raise spirits and excite ambitions. To diagnose Bahar as a 'garmi' (on account of her extreme anxiety and hot temper) would have been simple enough, had she not also suffered from a lowness of spirit that often led to migraine headaches. Whether in a 'garm' or a 'sard' mood, Bahar could always depend on her older sister to guide her back to a relative calm. Marjan had for a long time kept a close eye on Bahar and knew exactly when to feed her sautéed fish with garlic and Seville oranges to settle her hot flashes, or when a good apple 'khoresh,' a stew made from tart apples, chicken, and split peas, would be a better choice to pull Bahar out of her doldrums.

Are you fit enough, are you progressing in your hobby, are you competent as a cook or gardener? And family life—is your marriage intimate enough, your sexual life optimal, have you done all that you can do to raise excellent children? The infant/body rebels under all this pressure, signaling its distress. In response, we find ways to toughen it or to medicate it into silence. So the chronic stress-related symptoms arise, like digestion problems, muscle tension, constant fatigue, insomnia, migraine headaches; or a weak immune system makes us more susceptible to the flu and to colds.

Those that involve the back of the head are clearly related to the posterior neck muscles that are part of TMS. Some patients report pain all over the head; others have it in the frontal region. A common complaint is of severe pain “behind the eyes.” When they are unilateral (involving one side only), severe, and are accompanied by nausea, people are inclined to call them migraines. Tension headache can be as disabling as the worst neck, shoulder, or back pain.

For many years I was under the impression that TMS was a kind of physical expression or discharge of the repressed emotions just described. In fact, this is what I suggested in the first edition of this book. I had been aware since the early 1970s that these common back and neck pain syndromes were due to repressed emotions. Eighty-eight percent of a large group of patients with TMS had a history of other tension-related disorders, like stomach ulcers, colitis, tension headache, and migraine headache. But the idea of TMS as a physical manifestation of nervous tension was somehow unsatisfactory and incomplete. Most important, it did not explain the repeated observation that making a patient aware of the role of the pain as participant in a psychological process would lead to cessation of pain, to a "cure." (page 56)

Along with doubt about the accuracy of conventional diagnoses, there came the realization that the primary tissue involved was muscle, specifically the muscles of the neck, shoulders, back, and buttocks. But even more important was the observation that 88 percent of the people seen had histories of such things as tension or migraine headache, heartburn, hiatus hernia, stomach ulcer, colitis, spastic colon, irritable bowel syndrome, hay fever, asthma, eczema, and a variety of other disorders, all of which were strongly suspected of being related to tension.

For many years I was under the impression that TMS was a kind of physical expression or discharge of the repressed emotions just described. In fact, this is what I suggested in the first edition of this book. I had been aware since the early 1970s that these common back and neck pain syndromes were due to repressed emotions. Eighty-eight percent of a large group of patients with TMS had a history of other tension-related disorders, like stomach ulcers, colitis, tension headache, and migraine headache. But the idea of TMS as a physical manifestation of nervous tension was somehow unsatisfactory and incomplete. Most important, it did not explain the repeated observation that making a patient aware of the role of the pain as participant in a psychological process would lead to cessation of pain, to a “cure.” It was a psychoanalyst colleague, Dr. Stanley Coen, who suggested in the course of our working on a medical paper together that the role of the pain syndrome was not to express the hidden emotions but to prevent them from becoming conscious. This, he explained, is what is referred to as a defense. In other words, the pain of TMS (or the discomfort of a peptic ulcer, of colitis, of tension headache, or the terror of an asthmatic attack) is created in order to distract the attention of the sufferer from what is going on in the emotional sphere. It is intended to focus one’s attention on the body instead of the mind. It is a response to the need to keep those terrible, antisocial, unkind, childish, angry, selfish feelings (the prisoners) from becoming conscious. It follows from this that far from being a physical disorder in the usual sense, TMS is really part of a psychological process.

Some will have a scientific explanation, for example muscle spasms or migraines can be related to low magnesium levels, but some will have a unique meaning to us and it is down to us to decode them. I have a friend that has always said “By the time I get a mouth ulcer, I know that I have pushed myself too hard and my body is not getting enough nutrients to keep going.” I have taken note of that for myself. A cousin said that his stress always shows up as a feeling of toxins built up in knots in his shoulders. I recognize that one too!

The timid children seem to come into life with a neural circuitry that makes them more reactive to even mild stress, from birth, their hearts beat faster than other infants' in response to strange or novel situations. At twenty-one months, when the reticent toddlers were holding back from playing, heart rate monitors showed that their hearts were racing with anxiety. That easily aroused anxiety seems to underlie their lifelong timidity: they treat any new person or situation as though it were a potential threat. Perhaps as a result, middle-aged women who remember having been especially shy in childhood, when compared with their more outgoing peers, tend to go through life with more fears, worries, and guilt, and to suffer more from stress-related problems such as migraine headaches, irritable bowel, and other stomach problems.