Hi Daez,

Google alerts found your post for me.

Severe migraine like headaches can be caused by the excess of thyroid hormones in Graves' disease (they can also occur in underactivity of the thyroid caused by over treatment of Graves' disease).

If this is the case, they should go away when you start the antithyroid medications and your thyroid hormone levels come back to normal (although I have one at the moment despite years of treatment -- at least it isn't the I must go and cry type of pain they use to be). I was lucky, mine mostly stopped within 3 days of starting the drugs, but usually it takes a little longer than that.

I had really bad headaches for 5 years, before the doctors twigged I had Graves'. My mother had Lupus. They are probably just different presentations of the same underlying fault in the immune system, although it isn't much comfort to know there is probably only one underlying thing wrong with you, when you feel bad.

If you need some background on Graves' disease there is a forum over at mediboard.com I can recommend.

Try not to get too down. If it is any consolation, when I started the antithyroid medication, I felt absolutely wonderful for a few weeks. The wonderful feeling of not being poisoned everyday by your own horrnones. Okay one soon forgets how good normal (or nearly normal) feels, but it is a lot better once the treatment kicks in.

The Graves' may also respond to the treatments for Lupus, but this isn't well studied, because it isn't usually considered safe to give such drugs to people who "only" have Graves' disease, unless they have the chronic eye problems that sometimes come with Graves' disease.