4 Ways to Fight Unstoppable Migraines
Actually easy, effective things you can do when you have no strength left to fight.
Today is the fifth day of my latest migraine. I would complain, but I’m a little too numb in the face to manage it. Besides, I once had a migraine last for four whole weeks. After that nightmare, a five-day migraine doesn’t really seem a lot anymore.
I’ve gotten to the point where I can almost ignore it.
I grew up watching my mother suffer from awful migraines every few weeks, and I know her sister and mother had them too. So it’s easy to feel like I’m doomed to the same fate, and not really try to do something about it. After all, if all my mom’s trials at the doctor proved fruitless, what on earth could help me?
You know how your parents and grandparents can be really stubborn to trying new things, particularly in terms of their health? They seem somehow more comfortable in their suffering, and it always frustrated the snot out of me.
Now that I’ve had a few years of chronic migraines under my belt, and a decade of other chronic issues besides, I understand them a lot more now. I’m also at the point where I scoff at the thought of going to the doctor yet again to try asking for another option, and the thought of trying another lifestyle change just exhausts me. My energy for trying to fix it has basically run out.
Here’s the trick I’ve learned: not everything has to be a big, perfect solution.
It’s the little things that give you the most results, because that’s literally all you’ll have energy for. It also leaves you free from that pressure to get things right, get things perfect. People do exist who have somehow put in the insanely hard work to get their health figured out, but we’re either not there yet or are unlikely to ever be.
Plus, I’ve found that doing the littlest things can actually build up to a bigger difference than I was expecting. With more energy and freedom, it’s possible to take your health goals up a small step, inch by inch, until you do get to the point where you can deal with your migraines. Here are the small, actually easy things I’ve found that helped me make that difference.
1: Breathing exercises and oxygen therapy.
The National Headache Foundation reports that oxygen therapy has been a known treatment for cluster headaches and migraines since 1939, when a Mayo Clinic doctor discovered that 80% of patients saw their headaches completely or partially gone. While he wasn’t testing specifically for migraine relief, he did note that oxygen therapy seems to help all manners of headaches.
I actually discovered this when I was a teenager and trying to help my sobbing mom through another 2-week brain-buster. It’s easy enough and effective enough that even my near-zombie mom, who’s never done anything so alternative as take a healthy walk, was able to use it. It’s not like I could convince her to go to the doctor, but I did manage to get her to control her breathing.
It’s super simple. Breathe in for 5 seconds, hold for 5 seconds, then exhale for 5 seconds. The breaths shouldn’t be too deep, just really slow and controlled. You can adjust the timings for that, but the point is, keeping focused on that cycle of exhaling and inhaling does wonders.
I’ve done it myself for every migraine since. When the pain gets really bad, I jump to controlling my breathing. If you’re resting and relaxed, it can sometimes get rid of the pain completely, even if not the pressure. It’s part meditation, part distraction, but really it feels like taking myself out of my body, far away from the pain.
2: Prevention is worth a dozen cures.
Take your painkiller early! My mom always did this — she’d feel the migraine coming and try to ignore it, try to tough it out before going for the pill, or just plain forget that she had painkillers. It always ended in hair-ripping pain and desperate double-dosing. The truth is, once the migraine hits, the medicine has very little chance of working. So she actually ended up just driving up her tolerance to the medicine without actually seeing the benefit. Now, nothing really gets her any relief.
When you feel the migraine coming, or if you even suspect a whiff of it heading your way, take the pill early, get into your breathing control, and shut down. Which leads me to my next point…
3: Prioritize.
This is the biggest, worst trap. You’re going to think, “No, I can’t! I have stuff to do. At the very least, I’ve just got to get this one thing out of the way… then I can take care of myself.”
Especially if you’re a parent, and especially if you’re the more responsible parent, you’re going to think that this won’t get done if you don’t do it. Well, you’re probably right. It’s not going to get done, and you just have to accept that.
You have to tell yourself: It’s okay if it doesn’t get done today, because the alternative is 6 or 7 days of nothing getting done and excruciating pain the whole time. It’s intensely hard to sacrifice the short term for the long term, but you have to do it. Take your pill, call out sick, lay down in a dark room with ice, put the phone and computer away, and power down. Trust me, the other side will be a lot closer and sweeter than if you’d tried to power through.
4: Information is power.
A great, passive way to fight migraines is really to just keep track. Now, tracking your life is one of those things that I just hate doing, and I think most people who’re tired from chronic illnesses do too. I still haven’t gotten to the point where I can keep track of everything I eat and when, whether I exercised, or whatever. It just feels pointless.
But for migraines, there are some very easy things to write down: the date of when your migraines start and end, and any notes on what you think might have triggered it at the time.
When you have it written down, you might start to see patterns emerge. Maybe it’s whenever you had lamb for dinner, or were out in the sunshine, or didn’t eat all day. If you’re female, I find it’s useful to also write down when your periods start and end, as that can be a huge part of it. My family’s migraine curse is definitely on a monthly schedule and seems to have skipped the men altogether, although my brother does get cluster headaches from time to time.
Regardless, that information you passively collect can help you down the road, whether it’s to experiment with avoiding certain things and seeing if it makes a difference, or as helpful information to give to a doctor if you ever try hopping back in that saddle.
Ultimately, when so much of your life is sucked away with migraines, you have to be conservative with your energy.
It’s okay to not be able to fight with everything you have. The little actions you can take, though, has the potential to make all the difference and make your life easier.
