I thought, for the sake of my fellow sufferers out there (none of whom seem to be reading me, but oh well) I'd talk a little about Coenzyme Q10, which has improved my quality of life lately. I superstitiously fear to say anything in case I somehow jinx myself -- but just in case it could help anyone else, I feel obliged to put in my two cents on the subject.
I have other things going on -- other treatments I'm looking into, but I'll try to get to that soon. Hopefully I will have good things to report -- but there are tedious complications to getting cleared through insurance etc. and I don't feel up to delving into all that in my currently scattered state of mind.
Anyway -- I don't remember where I read about CoQ10. But I read about a clinical trial that showed a good percentage of people who took the supplement for four months and reported a 50 percent reduction of headaches. Well -- 50 percent isn't anywhere close to where I'd like to get, but hey, I'll take what I can get.
I bought the stuff and took the first dose before leaving the parking lot of the health food store. I was feeling that familiar queasy, pre-headache pain that has become such a source of dread for me -- always wondering if it' going to stay a headache, or if it's going to segue into the horror of migraine. Anyway, it seemed to help right away. And I began taking it every day. I wasn't sure how much to take at first. I think in the study it said something about people taking between 100 and 300 mg -- or maybe I read that somewhere else. I started with 100, but that didn't seem quite enough, so I upped it to 200 after a few days.
Here's a weird thing -- in the research about using it for migraine, I read that it should be taken as a preventative, but wasn't effective to abort an attack, but one evening I was at work and felt a headache coming on and it was starting to ramp up and I didn't take medicine fast enough and I thought, "here we go." For some reason -- I don't remember really even thinking about why I was doing it -- I took another 100 mg of the CoQ10 -- and the headache faded away!
So -- pretty cool, right? I've used it a few times like that and it seems to work some of the time. BUT -- and of course there's a but -- there are some side effects and I've found I really shouldn't take more than 200 mg per day. Otherwise I get a fairly unpleasant stomach ache and it also aggravates my insomnia. But I feel that, at least for now, it has been helping me keep my medicine use in check. I'd been trying to alternate Exedrin with the Maxalt, but I guess I was using it too much because by the beginning of November it started really ripping up my stomach and I had to cut waaaaay back -- like I didn't take it for more than a month to make sure I gave my stomach lining time to recover. Since then, I've cautiously used it 2-3 times without too much distress, but I'm trying not to use it more than once or twice in any two week period.
So -- I would feel comfortable recommending CoQ10 to any migraine suffer. Possibly people with less medicine sensitivity than I would be able to use it without any side effects at all.
I'll get back to ya on the other stuff I mentioned.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
long time no write
Sorry about that.
Depriving you, all of you, my gazillion followers, of my amazing brilliance and insight.
But enough with the chit-chat.
I wish I could say the reason I haven't written is every thing's been just peachy and the migraines mysteriously went into remission or something like that.
But that isn't the case. A few times, mostly while lying in bed consumed with pain for hours on end, I've had fleeting ideas for posts that would shed light on this horrible affliction. It isn't that I've given up on finding a cure, or at the very least, a way to cope with this and not let it take over everything in my life -- but I've begun to feel that thinking I could somehow write my way out of it was a little naive, or maybe just misguided.
Still, there are many weird little things about living with migraine that seem worth exploring a bit. Like the way that the fear of an attack makes me lose my mind. For instance, even though I don't really believe that chocolate, nuts, pineapple, citrus, balsamic vinegar, or several other food items I can't think of at the moment cause me to have headaches, because I have read that they do for some people, I tend to avoid eating them. Once I threw out the last two pieces of some honey mustard chicken I'd made because I became convinced that the vinegar in the mustard was a trigger. In fact, I haven't made the recipe since, even though I have eaten ketchup and salsa, which probably have as much vinegar as mustard does if not even more.
Maybe that's not really that interesting, but I think it illustrates some kind of magical thinking that begins to creep up around my migraines -- like if I sacrifice chocolate to the migraine gods, they will be appeased and leave me alone. These elaborate rituals of fear spring up around the most everyday activities.
A bright side is that although several things I've tried haven't worked against the migraines, they've been helpful for other things. Like the neti pot, which is a little teapot like thing with which to do saltwater nasal washes. Since I've been using it daily, I haven't had a sinus infection. It's been a couple of years. Once I stopped using it for a couple of weeks and I came down with one. And vitamins -- since I've been taking daily multivitamins, I've hardly gotten sick at all (which is an especially good thing since I use up my sick days on migraines).
But -- I can't say I haven't found some things to help me cope.
The latest thing is Co enzyme Q 10, a kind of freaky supplement that has something to do with mitochondrial DNA (it's something that occurs naturally in cells, and it apparently abates with aging). I read about a study of people taking it daily cutting migraine attacks in half. So I started taking it. It seems to be helping, but I still get clusters of them a day or so before my period and for the first three to five days thereafter and then another little bunch for a week or so around when I'm ovulating. I've read about how those are the two times of the month that the hormone progesterone is at its lowest point. For a while it seemed like using progesterone cream was helping, but then it stopped working. As most things seem to, eventually.
Really, just writing about it is making my head hurt. Okay, I'm in about day three of my cycle, so I'm a little prone that way. But this isn't why I sat down to write. I haven't even gotten to that and I'm already fading out.
I wanted to write about my latest go round with the doctors. I had a kind of unpleasant experience with a doctor who seemed to hate me on first sight. Okay, I admit I had a bad first impression of her as well, but I was willing to give her a chance. She didn't seem interested in hearing what I had to say, and was sarcastic and rude with me. I hate to stop here without telling the whole story, because at the rate I'm going, I won't get back here for another year, but I really don't feel like staring at this screen is doing me much good at all.
So -- I'm going to stop and try -- really try -- revisiting the topic in the next few days. For whatever the hell good it would do. I know it might seem like I'm some kind of pariah here, friendless and bereft -- but I'm really not. I actually have quite a large circle of friends and friendly acquaintances, but I've been reluctant to put it out there and invite them in. Maybe it wouldn't matter. Maybe one or two people would take a gander once or twice and that would be the end of it. But maybe they would judge me, think I'm stupid or melodramatic or self pitying or something. It isn't that I don't tell anyone about them -- I occasionally bore a few of my closest friends and once or twice when I'm particularly distressed I'll spill to someone I really don't know well at all. But it seems like a weakness in a way that somehow this doesn't -- at least, as long as no one I know reads it.
So there you have it. My neurosis all served up on a bed of slaw.
The only other thing is, since I wrote last, I guess in January of last year, I've had four of the worst migraines I've ever had in my life. One in February, that lasted for about 36 hours and involved copious vomiting; another one in the beginning of September that was nearly as long and happened when I was traveling (I was staying at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Alexandria, Va for the worst of it -- by far the nicest place I've ever puked) Then I had TWO like it in October, two weeks apart, then another one that lasted slightly less long Thanksgiving weekend, so instead of making merry and eating too much with friends, I lay in bed, getting up only to vomit or let the cat out.
So that was actually five, I suppose, not four. I guess I could just go back and edit, but that seems like too much bother...
Depriving you, all of you, my gazillion followers, of my amazing brilliance and insight.
But enough with the chit-chat.
I wish I could say the reason I haven't written is every thing's been just peachy and the migraines mysteriously went into remission or something like that.
But that isn't the case. A few times, mostly while lying in bed consumed with pain for hours on end, I've had fleeting ideas for posts that would shed light on this horrible affliction. It isn't that I've given up on finding a cure, or at the very least, a way to cope with this and not let it take over everything in my life -- but I've begun to feel that thinking I could somehow write my way out of it was a little naive, or maybe just misguided.
Still, there are many weird little things about living with migraine that seem worth exploring a bit. Like the way that the fear of an attack makes me lose my mind. For instance, even though I don't really believe that chocolate, nuts, pineapple, citrus, balsamic vinegar, or several other food items I can't think of at the moment cause me to have headaches, because I have read that they do for some people, I tend to avoid eating them. Once I threw out the last two pieces of some honey mustard chicken I'd made because I became convinced that the vinegar in the mustard was a trigger. In fact, I haven't made the recipe since, even though I have eaten ketchup and salsa, which probably have as much vinegar as mustard does if not even more.
Maybe that's not really that interesting, but I think it illustrates some kind of magical thinking that begins to creep up around my migraines -- like if I sacrifice chocolate to the migraine gods, they will be appeased and leave me alone. These elaborate rituals of fear spring up around the most everyday activities.
A bright side is that although several things I've tried haven't worked against the migraines, they've been helpful for other things. Like the neti pot, which is a little teapot like thing with which to do saltwater nasal washes. Since I've been using it daily, I haven't had a sinus infection. It's been a couple of years. Once I stopped using it for a couple of weeks and I came down with one. And vitamins -- since I've been taking daily multivitamins, I've hardly gotten sick at all (which is an especially good thing since I use up my sick days on migraines).
But -- I can't say I haven't found some things to help me cope.
The latest thing is Co enzyme Q 10, a kind of freaky supplement that has something to do with mitochondrial DNA (it's something that occurs naturally in cells, and it apparently abates with aging). I read about a study of people taking it daily cutting migraine attacks in half. So I started taking it. It seems to be helping, but I still get clusters of them a day or so before my period and for the first three to five days thereafter and then another little bunch for a week or so around when I'm ovulating. I've read about how those are the two times of the month that the hormone progesterone is at its lowest point. For a while it seemed like using progesterone cream was helping, but then it stopped working. As most things seem to, eventually.
Really, just writing about it is making my head hurt. Okay, I'm in about day three of my cycle, so I'm a little prone that way. But this isn't why I sat down to write. I haven't even gotten to that and I'm already fading out.
I wanted to write about my latest go round with the doctors. I had a kind of unpleasant experience with a doctor who seemed to hate me on first sight. Okay, I admit I had a bad first impression of her as well, but I was willing to give her a chance. She didn't seem interested in hearing what I had to say, and was sarcastic and rude with me. I hate to stop here without telling the whole story, because at the rate I'm going, I won't get back here for another year, but I really don't feel like staring at this screen is doing me much good at all.
So -- I'm going to stop and try -- really try -- revisiting the topic in the next few days. For whatever the hell good it would do. I know it might seem like I'm some kind of pariah here, friendless and bereft -- but I'm really not. I actually have quite a large circle of friends and friendly acquaintances, but I've been reluctant to put it out there and invite them in. Maybe it wouldn't matter. Maybe one or two people would take a gander once or twice and that would be the end of it. But maybe they would judge me, think I'm stupid or melodramatic or self pitying or something. It isn't that I don't tell anyone about them -- I occasionally bore a few of my closest friends and once or twice when I'm particularly distressed I'll spill to someone I really don't know well at all. But it seems like a weakness in a way that somehow this doesn't -- at least, as long as no one I know reads it.
So there you have it. My neurosis all served up on a bed of slaw.
The only other thing is, since I wrote last, I guess in January of last year, I've had four of the worst migraines I've ever had in my life. One in February, that lasted for about 36 hours and involved copious vomiting; another one in the beginning of September that was nearly as long and happened when I was traveling (I was staying at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Alexandria, Va for the worst of it -- by far the nicest place I've ever puked) Then I had TWO like it in October, two weeks apart, then another one that lasted slightly less long Thanksgiving weekend, so instead of making merry and eating too much with friends, I lay in bed, getting up only to vomit or let the cat out.
So that was actually five, I suppose, not four. I guess I could just go back and edit, but that seems like too much bother...
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