Try Cafergot, if you can find it. And don't take more than the prescribed dose or you'll be sorry.
Headaches From Hell
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What kinds of medications relieve symptoms?
There are a number of medications that are really helpful, and in the book I divide them up into preventive, abortive and rescue medicines. Preventive medications would be something that you take every day or you take for a set amount of time. Abortive medicines would be something that you take just as a migraine is starting to stop it. The rescue medicines are a last ditch.
I use something called the MIDAS. It stands for migraine index disability assessment score. It helps you figure out how many days over the last three months you were affected by the migraines. Based on that number, it divides you into mild, moderate or severe. I think that's really helpful.
Can lifestyle changes help?
Some people are really sensitive, and they need to get the same amount of sleep every night or they will get a migraine. Exercise can be really helpful. In addition to overall wellness, when you exercise, you get to a certain point where your body starts to make beta endorphins, chemicals that make you feel better and decrease pain. If you can exercise consistently, that can really help. A lot of people are taught the old food triggers of cheese and chocolate and red wine, and what we have found is that none of these except possibly red wine are known migraine triggers. As for cheese and chocolate and preservatives, it's very individualized. With our busy lives, we tend to eat really badly. And one thing that I think helps is to try to keep your glycemic index steady. What you want to do is try to keep your blood sugar from fluctuating tremendously by eating small amounts of food that are really nutritious fairly frequently during the day.
What kind of a doctor should you see if you have migraines?
In the ideal world, everyone would have access to a headache center with neurologists who have training in taking care of patients who get headaches. But it doesn't always happen. One thing that patients can do is to try to educate themselves and take that information to their physicians. It's important to find someone who is empathetic.
For more information Bernstein suggests these sites: the American Headache Society and the National Headache Foundation .
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