Magnesium and Optimal Nerve Health
I said last time I was about to order a Kindle book about healing headaches (you can find the link on this page), because it had been personally recommended to me and there were so many rave reviews about it on amazon.  However, while in the process of ordering, I came across another book that started me thinking...

Its called The Magnesium Solution for Migraine by Jay S Cohen.

Usually I buy a book like this after reading a sample first, but I bought this one without doing that because somewhere in the back of my mind I had connected feeling better with taking this supplement?  Because I also suffer from Hypothyroidism, magnesium was recommended for better GI tract health and somehow, I noticed that I did 'feel better' while taking it, but have not yet been able to identify why?  

So I've decided even before reading it that I'm going to take magnesium regularly from now on, because even more coincidentally, it turns out this doctor had painful veins in his legs as well.  We're not talking about varicose veins as such, more like a general feeling of pain throughout (the blood supply to) the legs.  

For my part, I noticed that for the last couple of months, my right leg is incredibly painful at times and its not as if I have huge bulging varicose veins, its more like a rheumatic pain sensation?  I've often wondered if there's a connection between my leg pain and my migraines?  So with all of this in mind, I think this book is probably going to help me - hopefully a lot (?).    

So far I've been able to work out that my migraines are the result nerve hypersensitivity in my head and more than likely affecting the third cranial nerve, the Oculomotor Nerve (see last post).  

It turns out that being magnesium deficient is common to people living in industrialised societies and especially so of people with migraine!  

This vital chemical element, known as an alkaline earth metal, turns out to be essential to nerve health, as you can see from this extract of the book:

"I soon learned that magnesium was an essential element for the normal activity of nerves and blood vessels, the key players in normal vascular functioning.......it is the body's natural calcium antagonist, and the balance of magnesium and calcium is key to vascular health"

By Jay S Cohen

Well, so far I've learned that migraine sufferers are typically very low on this mineral, added to the fact that its very difficult to take proper readings of its presence in blood serum anyway (watery part), as most of the time its only found in cells, not blood.  

I know this probably sounds crazy but I've been taking it now for 3 days and I can already notice a difference.  You probably think I'm exaggerating, but let me tell you, I'm a person that's very tuned into their body, its like my body kind of speaks to me or something?  Seriously, for instance, I knew I was pregnant 3 days after fertilisation because of a 'tingly feeling' all over my body.  I will never forget it, it was quite extraordinary.  It follows that it was no surprise to me when it was confirmed, because I had felt it as a positive chemical change.  Do you know what I mean?  (That was several years ago, so please dont think this is now going to turn into a mum-to-be blog - lol!)

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Lifestyle Changes

I'm still avoiding cheese, drink only one coffee a day now and limit my chocolate intake to lunchtime only.  I try to breathe more deeply as often as I can (especially first thing in the morning) and have the window open in the car and when I'm cooking.  I use my neck massager when I'm stressed and want to get to sleep quickly.    

Interesting Little Story

We had visitors at the weekend and I noticed one of them got a bad headache the day after they had some alcohol.  Funny thing is I knew something was going to go amiss, because as I watched this person leave, it occurred to me that they were not sufficiently dressed for the colder weather.  Turns out they had 3 beers and the next day a vomiting headache.  I remarked to them that the same has happened to me on countless occasions and the link was being very cold then drinking alcohol.  I told him the veins in his head had constricted with the strong coffee he had before he went out, plus the freezing temperatures made the veins constrict even more, then they had dilated too quickly with the alcohol and dilated even more in the very warm room they were subsequently in.  The resulting blood rush to the brain had caused a cranial nerve disturbance of some sort?    

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!