Kids, lemme tell ya: Migraines suck. I was going to write an essay about the genetic bases of migraines yesterday but since I was having one all I could do was go to the library and take a nap.
No one knows all that much about why people get migraines, but it seems to have to do with 1) vasodilation in the brain, 2) activation of the trigeminal nerves due to a wave of depolarization across the cortex, and 3) low levels of serotonin (5-HT). Also possibly polymorphisms in genes involved in the metabolism of homocysteine and steroids.
I heard a dreaful story recently about a woman who had such awful chronic migraines that she couldn't leave the house for months, but her GP basically thought she was making it up - or that it was, no pun intended, all in her head. A neurologist finally made a correct diagnosis, but only after she'd suffered for months and months and gotten nerve damage from taking the wrong kind of medicine. I am very pleased that mine are not as bad as that, but I can understand, a little, about people underestimating the misery of someone who says, "I have a headache." Even I feel like a wuss sometimes.
I've probably been having migraines of some kind all my life, but I also had a lot of ear and sinus infections so I always chalked my headaches up to blocked pipes in the head. But then I did a little more reading on the subject and my headaches seem to fit the description of migraine pretty well.
Before I get a headache I can usually "feel it coming on". This isn't painful, exactly, it's more like a sort of pressure or tightness behind my eyes. Particularly when I was younger this would be accompanied by a sense of flatness to my vision, as though the world were a 2D painting. I remember this happening when I was on a rafting trip at camp, and to combat it I would try to look at the farthest away hilltop to try and re-set my depth perception. It's not the same as closing one eye, though: it's more the feeling of what I see being projected onto a screen in front of my eyes . . . or, rather, that I can see just fine, my eyes are working, but my brain is not processing the input correctly. I get a general sick feeling, kind of floaty but not feverish, as though I am not all there in my body.
Then I get painfully sensitive to noises and smells, to being touched, to motion (e.g. standing up on the bus), and sometimes to light. The smell of perfume or rubber is enough to make me feel nauseated. Even looking at a painting can make me feel dizzy. And the tiredness: I describe it as feeling "sandbagged" - as in a bag of sand has dropped on my head. I saw this in some film where the bad guys are waiting in the wings to nab an actor but then someone drops sandbags on their heads and they collapse ... was that in Moulin Rouge? Or Back To The Future?
When we lived together, Boomy said she could tell when I had a "headache face" in the morning, and would tread softly, because I was likely to be very irritable. Needless to say, I am often very irritable when I have a headache or the prodromes (precursor symptoms). Sometimes I crave sweets, especially cherry danishes. Like I will die if I don't get some sugar. I also want coffee.
Then the headache comes on, like a radio being turned up. Usually behind my eyes, sometimes on one side, sometimes all over, and I feel like my head is in a vice. It throbs. I can feel every pulse of blood all over my skull. My whole body tingles. It's most unpleasant. Usually it builds in a wave, plateaus, and then dies down quickly, often only after I've napped. At this point I pretty much only want to sleep. Well, take some painkillers and then sleep. Springy will recall with horror the time we were on a crowded, hot, noisy train in Tunisia when I thought my head was going to explode and it hurt too much even to sleep. He very nicely wrangled me some unmarked white pills from the conductor that dulled it enough to let me go to sleep. That was probably the worst one I have ever had.
Not coincidentally, the Tunisia headache happened right around the time of a sirocco wind and sandstorm. Any time the barometer leaps or plummets, my head will let you know ahead of time. And it's not just me and I'm not being psychosomatic! Apparently this is a common trigger for migraines!
When I wake up I feel like I have been scrubbed out on the inside; it's a combination of hangover and euphoria. Like coming out of a sauna into the cool air.
So that is my headache story. Apologies to anyone who doesn't care about this, but it makes doing any work really difficult when it happens, and I would say I average one or two bad ones a month, plus a few smaller ones that I honestly don't even notice anymore.
I find the serotonin link very interesting, as well. I wish I had made some kind of record of my headaches so I could compare their frequency with factors such as diet, weather, hormones, and medications that affect hormones and/or neurotransmitters.
