Fortunately, I suffer from headaches only very occasionally. I may have a lot of other aches and pains but the head is, thankfully, spared of much pain. But when I do get headaches, it is quite a pain, believe me. And that makes me wonder what migraine sufferers must have to go through.
A close family friend is a victim of migraine attacks. And she has them really bad. She carries her migraine pills in her purse all the time and has been told by her physician that she must pop a pill as soon as she feels the first hint of pain. He has advised her to not wait for the migraine to hit fully and then take the pill because in that case, the relief will be delayed in coming.
I am also reminded of a former colleague who was those very quiet types and so also suffered in silence when she got a migraine attack. Earlier, when we did not know she got migraines, we would wonder why she kept disappearing once in a while – in around gaps of says 20-25 days and returned looking all shaken up. Then once I found her in the toilet – she had locked herself in and lay on the floor there. Two of us went in search of her, more out of curiosity than anything else, and got the shock of our life when we found her skirt peeping out from under a toilet door (we had those half-in-length ones). We looked under to find her thus prostrate! She later confessed that whenever she got a migraine attack, she had to hide herself in the loo, away from the noise and sunlight!
In her case, noise and sunlight made the pain worse. With someone else I know, she has to throw up in order to feel better. With each person, the pain is different and path to relief also different. And so are the triggers.
Now this is the most important point – the trigger. What sets off the attack.
Interestingly, the triggers are different for each individual. For someone, coffee is a trigger, for another drinking coffee does not set off a headache but staying out in the sun will. For one individual, chocolates bring on the headache while eating cherries could lead to a migraine attack in another.
Some other food items that can bring on an attack are red wine, fermented cheese, dairy products or citrus fruits. Other common triggers are bright sunlight or flickering lights from a TV set, smell, loud or sudden noise, weather changes and hormonal imbalance.
Do you know of any more triggers? If you do, you can share here with this forum.