The thing that stood out most from my last visit to the doctor was his description of "the need to constrict the blood flow to my head during migraine".

Obviously, that was the effect I obtained from using the ice pack, although I hadn't quite thought of it in that way.  I just thought the ice made the region numb.

Interestingly, when I used the frozen peas method, I noticed my hands became very cold as a result, and on two occasions I noticed that my headache only started to subside once my hands were freezing, especially my right hand.  I think that had something to do with the blood flow to the right side of my head, or maybe a cooling down of my blood all over?

So working outwards from those two ideas, I began reading generally about Vasodilators and their counterpart, Vasoconstrictors.

Alcohol is clearly an extreme vasodilator, which is why drinking through a migraine is about the worst thing I could have done, but I've tried that, more than once!  While caffeine is a vasodilator round the body, most interestingly it acts a vasoconstrictor in the head, hence its included in a lot of headache medication.  I've read that Beta Blockers are prescribed to chronic migraine sufferers but that seems a strange thing to do, especially as they are also vasodilators?  I suppose the slowing down of the heart rate is the aim with those things, which sounds good in theory, but if I have to live with headaches that occur more often as a result of their inherent vasodilation, then I'm not going to cling to that idea anymore, especially as a lot of people on Beta Blockers seem to suffer terribly with tooth enamel degeneration.

So, I proceeded casually, thinking more closely about what I had done wrong last month?  Then I remembered I had taken Gingseng with Gingko all last month.  Turns out Gingko is a vasodilator all over the body, including the head!  So that was clearly a big no-no.  I also took paracetamol all last month, because I had various aches and pains, turns out that was the worst thing I could have done. If that wasn't bad enough, another thing I did totally wrong last month was I took a low dose Beta Blocker for about 3 days, during the headache.  Another big no-no, firstly because it was too late, and secondly because it was more than likely making things worse.

Then after quite a lot of stressful encounters one way or another, I felt myself starting to have a dreaded headache.  I used my neck massager that night, which worked a treat and helped me to sleep in a much more relaxed way - I had used the heat setting and set the stopwatch on my mobile phone to time it for 15 minutes.  But that day turned out to be quite demanding and I felt my mood decline by the afternoon, where quite often it goes up.

In the end I started to get pain around my eye and the light was bothering me.  Then I had a full blown kind of panic attack added to that I dreaded the thought that I would get another migraine - but my bowels were OK, so I held out hope.  I started crying (of all things), which was a surprise because I hate doing that, as its such a complete waste of time and it gives me dry eyes and headache.

That's when I remembered a video I'd seen on YouTube recently about how to treat a stress response that could result in headache, by zoning in on a pressure point in your hand.  When I saw the video, that you can find here I couldn't find the exact swelling in the hand, that he describes.  But when I was upset, I did find it!  The procedure worked, which was a complete surprise to me, because I thought it wouldn't - I'm pessimistic like that.  I felt the pressure and sadness of my thoughts build up on three occasions during that evening, and each time I performed the procedure, I could feel the pain subside in the side of my head and around my eye.  I consider this a very valuable discovery and would add that I pinched my hand very forcefully to achieve that relief.  I can feel this morning there is no longer any swelling in my hand.

I'm still reading about B Vitamin deficiency, which apparently is a very common disorder in the industrialised world.  But fascinatingly, even though that group of nutrients is essential to Serotonin production, a lot of B Vitamins are also....wait for it....vasodilators!