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What causes your migraines and what do you do about it?

I’ll keep it short…

A trigger of mine is air travel;

Cause is cabin pressure and the oxygen change .

Inhaling steam from a towel or a cup of hot water has helped. Simply ask a flight attendant for a hot cup of water and a towel. The nice warm and humid air has helped calm a few episodes for me.

420 Help,

Your symptoms sound more like a sinus issue based on your remedy. The molecular pressure of the oxygen will not be positively effected by the moist air. In fact, moist air holds less oxygen than dry air.

If your head ache starts quickly after take-off, it is likely just a sinus head ache related to the change in air pressure. If it takes a while before the head ache manifests, it can be caused by the lower oxygen levels to your brain.

The moist heat may be increasing blood flow to your face and sinuses. This can be comforting.

I am interested in any others observations.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 420_Helps (Post 698057)

Inhaling steam from a towel or a cup of hot water has helped. Simply ask a flight attendant for a hot cup of water and a towel. The nice warm and humid air has helped calm a few episodes for me.

Steam makes me worse! I used to love steamrooms/saunas but they bring on my migraines now.
My triggers are flashing lights/car headlights at night (as a passenger, can't drive at night now), and thinking too hard.

I try to use cold compress and peppermint oil for my migraines, but inevitably end up taking naratriptan.

The biggest issue I have with migraines is due to the barometer changing. Example, when it drops due to low pressure changes because of the weather especially during this time of year my migraines are at a very high effect and I am constantly taking something just to function. It is very hard to function during this time of year so I'm actually quite thankful to be a freelance copywriter and work from home as it does make my life a little easier. What doesn't make my life easier is constantly having to rely upon the 20 minute triptan I've been given to kick in before actually being able to accomplish a needed project. It just gets very frustrating after awhile because it is a constant flow of the same nasty cycle over and over again which never ends.

In the months when my PCS was in the more acute stage, stress or overexertion were the big triggers for me. In particular, if I started crying, my chance for a migraine was 100%. As soon as my husband and I would start arguing, I would have to take an Imigran. Other ways I tried to deal with this was refusing to talk to my husband when he was in one of his moods. He has a mood disorder that is helped by meds but not cured, so about once or twice a month, he will become irrationally upset. Usually, I'd just talk him down, but with PCS, I just had to refuse to talk to him until his mood resolved on its own, which was hard to do, as it would usually mean a night's sleep before we were talking again. It didn't always prevent the migraine, but sometimes it would.

Prior to my injury and now, I only seem to get migraines triggered by medications, but when I do get them, they are as bad as they get. I am immobilized and vomiting, and the pain will not go away. My husband has had to take me to the emergency room several times when my meds weren't working. Now I take muscle relaxers and oxycodone when I get a migraine, which has worked thus far!

I do get headaches with barometric pressure changes, but they are not migraines. If only we could control the weather!