I had chronic migraines so bad 4 days out of every week I could not drink water or eat food. I'd puke from the pain. I could barely think straight and in the rarest of situations my mind would pass out from the pain.
Migraine medicine and other kinds of medicine I was given did not work at the time, so thinking they might be cluster headaches I turned to 4-aco-dmt, which is psilocin without the psilocybin, so no stomach nausea, but a bit weaker. It didn't stop a migraine once it had started, but it did work as a preventative. I did a little bit larger than a microdose once a week and had no pain, no migraines, no problems, for quite a long time. (A regular full sized dose I could take once every 12 days without migraines.)
I turned to 4-aco over mushrooms, because it was legal at the time, and no nausea. I believe it's still legal today, but I haven't kept up. Today, mushrooms are legal/deregulated in parts of the US, including where I live, so it's less of a concern.
Today I have a prescription medicine that works. I'm cognizant of taking a single drug for too long. When I look up what I'm currently taking (sumatriptan) people online complain it stops working at 7 years of use. This is great, because now I feel comfortable taking it for 5 years before needing to switch. However, the second I start needing more to function, I'm switching it out. I do not want a life long resistance. That needs to be avoided at all cost. When I was taking the 4-aco I was a bit more cautious, because I can't find online how long it works for migraines. I would rather keep it in my back pocket if I ever need it again, so I went off it the second I found a prescription drug that worked, despite that the 4-aco worked better.
My wife is perhaps in the early stages of this journey. What started as “bad headaches” once a week has, over the last six months, graduated into serious migraines where she can’t leave a pitch black room for most of the day. They seem to cycle intensity where they are much worse 2 weeks out of 4.
She’s on nortriptyline daily with sumatriptan taken during episodes, but which is only partially effective after the 2nd or 3rd dose and about 5 days a month basically totally ineffective.
It’s fucked up that the human body is capable of causing itself so much pain over an ailment we can’t even identify in any test or scan. It’s completely debilitating.
If it was for myself I would absolutely experiment with psilocybin or mushrooms in search of a treatment, but her personal history just isn’t conducive to anything remotely hallucinogenic without a very highly experienced guide in the best of circumstances.
> It’s fucked up that the human body is capable of causing itself so much pain over an ailment we can’t even identify in any test or scan.
This is the thing that really irks me about migraines: there's no fucking purpose. If my arm is over a fire, the pain is for a reason ("hey uhhhh you might want to move your arm") but migraines are senseless and debilitating pain for no conceivable reason. Even things like "oops, I forgot to drink enough water six hours ago" isn't particularly useful to me: I'm well-hydrated now but hve a migraine anyway. Thanks, body.
Lukcily for me, daily feverfew cuts back my migraines about 70-80%, and sumatriptan covers another 50% of the migraines I do get. That's still not 100% coverage though, and every time I'm sitting in a pitch black bathroom with cold sweats and vomiting into the toilet I have to ask myself "what is the point of this???"
For me its overstimulation. This modern world is too stimulating for our minds and eventually, for me, it causes a migraine. Its especially triggered by large amounts of visual information. So programming. Reading news. Browsing reddit etc. There are plenty of theories about how migraines work, but a good number orbit around the idea that the migraine brain is hyper excitable and during the run up to a migraine it loses control over its inputs.
So by this reasoning, a migraine is designed to stop you from consuming more information than your mind can handle. The pain of bright light is designed to keep you away from the stimulation of bright light. And the pain of noise to keep you away from stimulating noise.
It could be eye strain. I suffered from that and migraines and couldn't tell the difference between them. They felt the same, had the same duration, everything about them felt identical.
Then how do you know one is not the other? Also mine can be triggered by load noises. It was always a mystery to me how I could get hang overs without drinking! Its because overstimulation symptoms and a migraine are what I always thought a hangover was! Turns out a hangover isn't as bad as I thought. Simply drinking at home, the next day I don't get a horrendous headache and feel like every noise is sending shards into my soul.
I upgraded to a 4k monitor from 1080p in 2005 and suddenly half of my headaches went away. When the season changed and the sun started coming into my room, those headaches came back. Blackout curtains stopped them.
It was a pretty big ah ha! moment, because before that medicine didn't work on my "migraines" because I was suffering from multiple kinds of chronic pain at once.
It's possible we just don't know the purpose. There's a lot to life (and the human body) that we still don't know. I hope that one day we get more answers. Maybe even finding these new management drugs will help us eventually identify a root cause (assuming the drugs have a common effect/mechanism).
Yeah this is true. I wonder if it has something to do with the second brain we have in our stomach. Maybe in the next few decades we'll figure it out. Until then, I guess there's a consensus in the medical and scientific communities that I should take shrooms every morning. Radical!
I think of migraines as a signal that says, "you're doing something seriously wrong, on the regular, and I need you to stop".
It is a signal beyond the normal subtle communication we get from our bodies that must be listened for to be heard, the stuff yogis talk about.
For people in my family, including myself, it means avoiding certain contaminated food products, such as processed food including white flour.
For me personally, it is also avoidance of synthetic products such as VOCs, which cause me much suffering when I'm exposed to them. For example, furniture will off-gas that stuff for months and years after manufacture.
Another common source of pollutants is regular household "cleaning" products -- look up "indoor air pollution".
This stuff is rarely acknowledged in mainstream information sources, and it is certainly not easy to get away from. It requires a conscious effort, basically becoming your own EPA and FDA, and being much more strict than them.
I think it is worth considering for anyone suffering from migraines to try eliminating all this stuff from their life and seeing if it helps before trying to suppress the signal with drugs.
An easy way to try is to camp out in a clean outdoors area, bringing only clean food with you, while also avoiding new camping products, and any "sprays".
I've done a lot of eliminations like this over the years and still get migraines. To me they are seemingly random, but I'm willing to admit/accept that perhaps I haven't been strict enough. I'll keep your advice in mind. Thank you!
If you haven't started investigating the "new" CGRP medications, you need to. There are several on the market now, and it is a once-a-month injection. These have been a real life-saver for me. Going from 15 headache days per month to 3. And the attacks are also less sever.
> but her personal history just isn’t conducive to anything remotely hallucinogenic without a very highly experienced guide in the best of circumstances
Perhaps, given her suffering, it's time to find that guide.
Some things that helped me massively: Despite having 20-20, I would get eye strain and I could not differentiate it between a migraine and eye strain. Worse yet, eye strain lasts for days just like a migraine. Switching from a 1080p monitor to a 4k monitor with a reasonably low dot pitch, minimizing video game playing, and hunching (looking at a laptop screen, looking at a cell phone), helped me massively. Oh and blackout curtains are a godsend if the sun rises or sets in the general direction of the room you're staying in.
I went to a chronic pain clinic, and I was glad I did. When you lay in bed too long (especially when females do) the muscles deteriorate and this in itself causes chronic pain that can at times be difficult to distinguish from a migraine. I had to go to a physical therapist and it helped tons.
A pain clinic will prescribe antidepressants, because they often will work for all kinds of chronic pain, including migraines, but sadly for me they only worked about the first month and then became ineffective. However, I did learn from that the best anti-depressants and anti-anxietiants in the first world outside of the US (because pharmaceutical companies can't make a profit off of it) are RIMAs [1] and are absolutely worth perusing if you have depression. Out of pocket they're about $20 a month, and they can help with pain too.
And on top of all of that, turns out I get migraines from allergies. I'm unfortunately highly allergic to every grass and tree allergy allergists test and a few of them cause migraines for me. Second, I'm allergic to soy which causes a severe migraine response, so I'm constantly cautious. It was an allergist of all people who helped me get on the right migraine medicine. The allergist I went to dubs himself an allergist when other allergists fail, and does food allergies too. Unfortunately, my allergies haven't gone away, but at least I know a cause for my migraines.
A lot of drugs worked for me for “about a month” and then completely stopped working. I’m fascinated by the phenomenon. It’s like the body REALLY wants to have that migraine, and will figure out workarounds, no matter where you intervene medically.
I know you mention anti-anxiety, I had some prescribed, propranolol. 10-20-40-60. 60mg was the magic number.
I also have Botox for migraines done every 3 months.
I almost went the Botox route. I'm glad I found an alternative. Botox is dangerous because if you have a real issue, you can't tell, so pain related issues can compound on themselves.
All the replies are offering advice, but the one piece of advice I wish someone had told me at the beginning of my migraine journey was to not stop trying to fix them. There is an insanely long list of drugs that "work" but will probably have middling effects for her (triptans, tryptalines -- yes they're all different, sertraline, hydroxyzine, meloxicam, the newer CGRP injections, RF ablation, nerve blocks, massage, chiropracty, acupuncture, MRIs, botox injections, spinal taps, these have all been prescribed to me by various Neurologists).
The only real solution is to keep moving forward and keep hounding your doctor to keep you moving.
While migraines can be caused by anything, usually from allergic reactions, caffeine tends to exasperate or alleviate tension headaches. They rarely influence migraines.
I havent seen anyone mention it yet in the thread but if you can get your insurance to cover Emgality, give it a shot. Its a brand new peptide thats only been on the market for 2 years~. This is the first year I have been able to basically completely abate all pain derived from my cluster headaches (had them yearly at the same time for 5 years) by taking the injection (just) before onset of a cycle. Psilocybin never did much to effect cycle length or pain level for me, and the triptans have some of the worst side effects I have ever seen personally, in a drug. /anecdota
I used to take Sumatriptan, it was a life saver if you got onto it quickly.
As I've got older I've had them less and less so no longer need to take it - but I do recommend people having regular migraines to speak to their Doctor and mention it.
>I used to take Sumatriptan, it was a life saver if you got onto it quickly.
It's the opposite for me. If I take it too early into the migraine it sometimes doesn't work. I will intentionally sit with the migraine for around an hour, or until it gets bad enough, then take sumatriptan and wait the 1h30m to 2 hours for the pain to go away. 2-3 hours of a headache is far better than a day of a full on migraine. Once I take it and it doesn't work it builds up resistance for at least 12 hours, so I'm stuck. I'll take the headache.
Wow, amazing how varied people's responses to these things are! If I wait too long to take a triptan, its effectiveness reduces quite a bit. I generally try to arrest the migraine with ibuprofen but then take the triptan if it progresses.
Yep. At this point we shouldn't be thinking of a migraine as a singular thing. Sure, singular symptoms, but there are so many different varied causes and conditions that it can not be a single illness.
Sometimes when migraine medicine does not work for me, it's because it's a headache not a migraine. I have some over the counter "migraine strength pain killer" pills which are acetaminophen, asprin, and caffeine, which works most times the migraine medicine does nothing.
That sounds oddly curious to how psilocybin resistance works. With mushrooms, you have to take the entire dose at the outset. As soon as you can feel it, you now have a strong resistance and any further dose will have a greatly diminished effect.
I take it and it’s actually available over the counter (which is odd given how most of the rest of Europe seem to have it only by prescription and Sweden where I am is usually really restrictive). I have tried to figure out why it’s a prescription drug in many countries (reasons could include it’s addictive, has bad side effects, could cause side effects with other drugs, etc), but I haven’t found the reason. Does anyone have any clues on this? I have taken it for a few years and not seen a doctor in that time who I could ask.
In the US they have to apply for it to be over the counter and pay a bunch of money in studies. It's a pretty expensive process.
So, in the US it's over the counter if people will seek it out. This way they can charge more. If it's not over the counter it's something generic that people will not go out of their way to a doctor for. In the last 10 years in the US I think the only prescription drugs moved to over the counter is allergy medicine, which seems to fit this pattern: People will not go to a doctor for seasonal allergies typically.
I tried a sample of sumatriptan once and my head/mind felt so clear. I've been able to manage without prescription meds but have always wondered if normal people felt like that all the time.
Not for me. It's the opposite. The first two hours after I take it are a come up. My symptoms are different each time I take it: Sometimes I'm half cognizant at that time, sometimes normal. Sometimes I get very sleepy and want to take a nap. Sometimes it makes me feel like I have low blood sugar during the come up and I start mildly shaking needing to eat something. Sometimes an arm or my arms will go to sleep during the come up, which happens to me on lsd (but not mushrooms) as well. But once the come up is over, usually within an hour and a half, I feel completely normal like I took nothing.
I'm probably abnormal. I imagine if you take it while you do not have a migraine you'll get a mild heightened experience that may or may not be noticeable. It is, after all, a triptan.
Oddly, 4-aco always made my mind feel clear the way you're describing. A bit more awareness, a bit more clarity. On 4-aco I wouldn't notice much or any come up. It was just the effects from the drug getting stronger over the first hour.
Interesting. Sumatriptan makes me really loopy and slurs my speech. It can also make my jaw ache really bad, which is usually a sign it's working (it has about a 50% success rate for me). I often think that it works by moving the pain from my brain into my jaw.
I never really feel great after taking it, but I'll happily deal with the effects over a migraine any day.
I have an obnoxious clicking in my jaw whenever I chew, but other than that I don't have TMJ as far as I know. I do grind my teeth, but it's sporadic and stress-related rather than a constant thing.
I haven't been able to correlate actual jaw tension, teeth grinding, and migraines in any meaningful pattern. I'd say a good 60-70% of my migraines are due to some mix of brightness, hunger, thirst, exercise, sleep, and stress. Another 10% alcohol, and the rest is random: "Here's the migraine you ordered! Oh, you didn't order one? Well here it is anyway, enjoy!"
I'm sorry to hear that. It could be an inner ear issue. Sinuses are I believe the most common cause for migraines.
Unfortunately, I don't know if there is a process to clean out the inner ear. I met someone once who would get dizzy from time to time from her inner ear and it was just a condition she lived with.
I have indeed suffered from sinuses. I'll mention it to my physician. Also thanks for your top comment about avoiding life-long resistance -- you've been super helpful all around!
If you can’t get 4-aco but have access to mushrooms, search around for “lemon tek”, or “blue juice” cold water extraction. It can get you the psilocybin/psilocin without the body effect of chewing on mushrooms. Still not as easy to dose precisely as pharma grade, but don’t discount the entourage effect which could be as rich an area of research over the next few years as cannabinoid research is now.
Unfortunately, it became illegal around a decade ago. However, the ability to precisely measure a dose is a huge benefit over traditional mushrooms.
Anecdotally, I have a friend who experiences chronic cluster headaches and low mushroom doses were the first thing in 20+ years which they said just worked, and well, without any negative side-effects.
Unfortunately not really, as 4-AcO-DMT would definitely fall under the Federal Analogue Act. And if you order it in the mail (as is common with "research chemicals") they'll tack on charges for mail fraud and trafficking across state lines.
Technically they don't go after buyers for unscheduled drugs. If you buy in bulk large enough that they suspect you're a seller, but don't have any reports of you being a seller they'll give you a love letter which is, "We confiscated your package. Don't do it again." and that's the max penalty for buying 4-aco in the US. If a law is unenforced in the US, it is legal. To prove it is enforced if they ever want to go after sellers, they have to capture multiple sellers at once in bulk to prove there is no bias. The legal system is interesting in the US, isn't it?
Also, where I live (Oakland) it's totally outright legalized, so no problems.
Yeah, I've gotten love letters too. But that doesn't change the reality of what I said! It's not legal, if you order enough they will charge you under the Federal Analogue Act... or even on a small order they'll make up whatever story they want and raid you if they suspect you're up to something else more lucrative.
Oakland is one thing, but unscheduled doesn't mean much. That's the point of the federal analogue act and I remember exactly when it started being applied to tryptamine-based research chemicals around 2010. There are too many subtle chemical variations to take the time to put them all on the books directly, they are covered with the act.
We can talk theory and everything, but I've seen people get arrested and charged for both possession and procurement, so.
My wife and daughter both had the inner ear piercings have been migraine free. One for a year now and the other for 2 months. We will see how long it lasts. Daughter was a migraine every 1-2 weeks and wife was 2-3 a week.
Migraines and caffeine are not correlated, with rare exception like a food allergy to caffeine, coffee, or milk. However, tension headaches and caffeine are strongly correlated.
I don't drink much in the way of caffeine. When I drink coffee I drink decaf. I also drink decaf tea sometimes. I also drink irregularly. I'll go a week or two without any decaf or anything and then another week drinking six cups a day.
> Ten subjects were included in the final analysis.
...in the final analysis
... And how many subjects were not included in the final analysis?
10 is tiny in any case. This is noise. Ignore.
edit: Thankfully the article does actually include enough information to figure this out. 69 subjects screened, 12 took part. Two dropped out, 1 because of scheduling conflicts, 1 because their migraines went away). I also disagree with their experimental methodology. All 10 were given the placebo on the same day, and then two weeks later all 10 were given the psilocybin on the same day. As this was a local study (all participants in the same town), something as simple as the weather changed could explain the difference.
Study Title: Exploratory Controlled Study of the Migraine-Suppressing Effects of Psilocybin
It is perfectly reasonable exploratory research.
This is, of course, a relatively common epistemological failure for many individuals - the reduction of science to a binary proof/refutation system where a study can only transform your priors into a posterior of zero or one, so I guess it's hard to blame you.
> This is, of course, a relatively common epistemological failure for many individuals - the reduction of science to a binary proof/refutation system where a study can only transform your priors into a posterior of zero or one, so I guess it's hard to blame you.
Despite the long words in your sentence, this comment amounts to "you foolish binary thinker!"
This study has little predictive power and is hardly distinguishable from noise. It has a poor experimental design and is not a good example of how to do research.
It deserves a complete do-over with a better design and more subjects.
> Despite the long words in your sentence, this comment amounts to "you foolish binary thinker!"
I chose the words to not direct any criticism towards your person or identity but to a mistake that I also make sometimes. No insult was intended. But, all right, I won't talk about this with you any more.
I appreciate the effort to not directly insult me, but you're still trying to say a pretty snooty thing.
You could have just said "Well, Science isn't binary". Which is fine. Instead, you had to go on about how it's so tragic that everyone is wrong about it.
> the reduction of science to a binary proof/refutation system where a study can only transform your priors into a posterior of zero or one
So, to put it more simply, you're saying that this study should increase his confidence in psilocybin as a miracle cure for migraines from 0% to what? 0.1%? Whatever that updated degree of confidence is, it's very small. It's safe to ignore this study.
OC isn't saying this is unreasonable research. He's saying it's not attention worthy due to low statistical power.
The purpose of science is not prediction. The purpose of science is to find better deeper explanations for reality.
The key to the experiment was this: "Initial studies at the time seemed to suggest psychedelic drugs that activate 5-hydroxytryptamine 2A (5-HT2A) receptors could significantly reduce headache burden in chronic migraine sufferers."
We still need to do more studies and experiments and change our explanations to test those new explanations. That's all they've said. And here the initial comment was just going to cancel it outright because, probably, it didn't fit their internalized cultural moral landscape.
The experiment in question was testing an explanation, there is a HUGE lack of understanding of things that are banned, like Psilocybin--because they are banned.
> this study should increase his confidence in psilocybin as a miracle cure for migraines from 0% to what? 0.1%?
Had I ever thought about this question before, I would have started out at higher than 0% because I think a lot of migraines have psychiatric/psychological causes, which psilocybin can help with, I think.
So maybe an increase from
~10 to ~11 percent confidence in this hypothesis, for me.
The reality is you can easily google "migraine/cluster headache" + "psilocybin" and find a lot of research and anecdotal evidence that your prior that they might be a (sarcasm detected)"miracle cure" should not be 0%. For example:
Many nonpsychedelic indole alkaloids that are structurally related to psilocybin, (e.g., methysergide, ergotamine, dihydroergotamine, and methylergonovine) are used as treatments for cluster headache, although they do not abort cluster periods or extend remission period as psilocybin is noted to do.[1]
2-Bromo-LSD is also used to treat cluster headaches. In fact if you look, essentially every drug used to treat migraine/cluster headaches is closely related to and acts on the same serotonin receptors as approved medicines.
[Psychoactive substances as a last resort—a qualitative study of self-treatment of migraine and cluster headaches] These patients are in a desperate and vulnerable situation, and illicit psychoactive substances are often considered a last resort. There appeared to be little or no interest in psychoactive effects per se as these were rather tolerated or avoided by using sub-psychoactive doses. Primarily, psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide, and related psychedelic tryptamines were reportedly effective for both prophylactic and acute treatment of cluster headache and migraines. Treatment results with cannabis were more unpredictable. No severe adverse events were reported, but it was observed how desperation sometimes spurred risky behavior when obtaining and testing various treatment alternatives.[2]
Given their longstanding legal status, much of the research has been amateur/anecdotal/self-experimentation by people desperate for any kind of treatment. Cluster headaches are also known as "suicide headaches" given how many sufferers without effective treatment choose to kill themselves rather than live with the pain. You will find widespread anecdotal reports of people finding lifesaving relief from psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, 5-MeO-DALT, etc.
All of which is just to say this sort of generic "underpowered study!" skepticism isn't very helpful. Maybe it's not a great study, but you should update your confidence starting from more like 50-90% that at least a subset of people suffering from migraines/cluster headaches would greatly benefit from psychedelic treatment. And if you're not aware of any of this background, it might be worth doing some reading before telling people to have 0.1% confidence in a low risk treatment that just might save their life.
A close friend's father uses Psilocybin to treat cluster headaches. He dealt with these debilitating headaches for a long time, basically unable to function as a normal human. This is in the US, and he is a former small business owner (retired), with money, and was able to see numerous specialists, attempted many treatments, all of which were unsuccessful. I'm not sure how he figured out that Psilocybin is an option.
Psilocybin is the only thing that relieves his cluster headaches for months at a time. I believe he doses 3ish grams of dried mushrooms, once a day for 2 days. I hope this gets more attention now that some states are decriminalizing Psilocybin. I suspect that other substituted tryptamines would be helpful as well, without needing to digest lots of mushroom fiber (which can be hard on the gut unless you fast for a period of time before consuming them). 4-HO-MET and 4-AcO-DMT comes to mind.
There is an entire class of migraine medications that is based on triptan-class of drugs. They target similar receptors as psilocybin without the psychoactive effects. I've been using triptans for almost a decade to treat migraines.
I have suffered migraines for 40+ years, starting as a young child and I really suffered through the years when I didn't get any medication for it. For the last 15+ years I have treated it episodically using Sumatriptan and it still works 100% for me. Newer formulations such as Rizatriptan, paradoxically, don't work as well. I tried other prophylactic drugs such as valproic acid (worked but liver-toxic and caused weight gain), topiramate (caused loss of stream of though) but the side effects were not worth it.
There is one interesting experience which might be of value to other people: for a year I went on a zero carb diet -- and I mean zero with no cheating -- to lose fat. I lost the fat but also lost all migraine episodes as well. Completely migraine free for a year. Just that makes me want to go on the diet again.
For people in my family, white flour specifically is a big trigger, in additional to other substances I listed in other comments (processed food and VOCs).
With white flour, I don't even think it is the pesticides, because I know at least one family member for whom it was a trigger before we moved to a country which uses them for everything.
I get frequent migraines and they almost always correspond to physical transitions: hot-cold temperature changes or bright-dark.
I can reliably induce a migraine by looking at alternating black-and-white lines. I have never experienced more than one migraine in a 24-hr period.
For treatment, I've always used a combination of early identification (sudden awareness of own body temperature gradients) plus quick caffeine and marijuana supplementation.
When I was younger, the aura was short and the primary issue was the debilitating, long-lasting headache.
For the last 5 years or so, I only get the headache-part maybe 25% of time. In exchange, the auras have become instantly debilitating, nauseating, and almost incapacitating. My vision goes from normal, to mangled, to "I can see-but-not-comprehend" what I'm looking at. After some time, the aura lightshow slowly moves offscreen and then I feel fine again.
How do you have a placebo dose of psilocybin?! The effects are very noticable so lack of them would quickly reveal it was a placebo, I'd think. Unless it was not a blind test, in which case this would not matter.
Small doses of psilocybin are very difficult to detect. Personally I barely find it barely noticeable at 1.5g (in the dried shroom measure). Microdose levels are 1/10th of that, and often much lower.
Give someone a so-called microdose and it is unlikely that a placebo vs actual study would actually find that people could detect it.
"Psychedelic Effects Subjects scored the 5D-ASC scale at the
end of each experimental session. The percent possible score
for the total scale was significantly higher after psilocybin
(19.35% (7.55)) as compared to placebo (3.08% (1.80); p =
0.026, t(9) = 2.65)"
So, the placebo effect could have caused the reduction in migraines.
A common placebo for a small dose of psychadelics is a large dose of niacin, which causes you to flush and get hot flashes and chills. It's more than enough to get the mind going for someone who is bracing for the drugs to kick in.
Why must we be so quick to discredit placebos? If a certain set of stimuli (someone in a medically authoritative position saying "this thing will help you", followed by you taking it), can be shown to work well at reducing symptoms in clinical studies, why not embrace it?
how would this work at scale? people tend to take a dim view of doctors that lie to them. imagine finding out you've been paying $50/month for a sugar pill prescription.
The patient would have to not know what the real drug was. And then maybe they list hallucinations as a possible side affect. But then it can't really be a double blind because an hour in the care giver would know if they had the placebo or not
Anyone doing research on the effects of nicotinic acetylcholine inhibitors mixed with psilocybin? That seems like an obvious avenue for exploration, given we now know that they naturally occur together[1], but I haven't seen any papers on that yet.
I want to make this a top comment, because I think it could help someone. Eliminating the following has helped me and family members eliminate migraines:
* white flour products.
* processed food products with preservatives.
* VOCs from furniture, new cars, etc.
* any kind of synthetic cleaning products, which basically means dr. bronner's soap and nothing else. (If you look at "seventh generation", "mrs meyers", "jason", and other "eco" brands, they're all the same crap as dawn and others. They used to be OK in the beginning, but no more.)
It is certainly not easy, and basically requires you to become your own EPA and FDA and be vigilant and strict, and may initially cause tensions in your relationships, but I live in multiple domiciles without having one myself, and I've been able to slowly but surely convert them to Dr. B.
No brand is forever, and you have to keep watching it and switch to an alternative when it goes bad. For examples of brands who have already gone bad, see above.
Every day we play roulette with our bodies, bombarding them with thousands of synthetic chemicals we did not evolve with, meaning they came about in the last hundred years after millions of years of evolving without them. I think migraines are often "last resort" signals which tell us something is seriously wrong, and we need to stop.
I think we're just beginning to come around to this as a society over the past ~50 years, and it is only getting better, but very slowly. If you want to be ahead of the curve, this is it. I think we'll soon look back on this time the same we look back on shoe-fitting X-ray machines from back in the day.
I started taking it for mildly high blood pressure and my (almost daily) headache's disappeared. I've since found a couple studies where Lisinopril was tested for headache relief.
Can confirm, both beta blockers and ace inhibitors worked for me. Went from weekly headeaches taking handfull of paracetamol/ibuprofen to none in years. some other i'm taking now works for 90% .
Apparently beta blockers are well known for this, as a neurologist told me a few weeks ago. No clue why it was never mentioned when searching treatment. I found out myself also only after having to take it due to high BP.
Still looking for something that works for a relative, tried almost everything, including triptans and vitamin B2 (which I havent seen mentioned yet). Maybe mushrooms would be something to try next.
For some reason large doses of mushroom generally soothe my body because I tend to relax during and after the trip, but small doses (typical microdose scales) cause me to have quite severe headaches. Not migraine-levels of pain, but leave work and go lay down kind of pain.
I wonder what that mechanism is. Why not worse headaches, or any headaches with large doses? Why would such a tiny amount cause so much pain?
Has anyone here experienced anything similar?
It's a shame because I enjoy the glow of microdoses prior to the delayed onset of the headache. I don't feel anything remotely like a trip, but I do feel a sort of positivity and warmth I otherwise wouldn't. Almost like my mind has slowed down to take a break, and as a result, it feels a little nicer.
I started experiencing migraines 2 years ago. Just had a 2 month bout of them where at one point I had 3 in a week.
Initially I thought that my BJJ training was the issue as there was a direct correlation between training, exertion, neck strain and migraines the next day. But they progressed to migraines from the gym (weights), after a meal and one drink, and even for no apparent reason. I still think there is a link between neck strain which is exacerbated by computer use and eye strain.
Sumatriptan saved my life. Maybe this could also help, in small doses.
If you suffer migraines and you drink coffee, STOP drinking coffee immediately. Even if you've been drinking coffee forever with no migraines until recently, trust me, stop the coffee.
I've had migraines for 10 years. I would guess about 1 per week/fortnight on average, lasting for 8ish hours. Never drank coffee until this year, when I started drinking it along with a high dose of aspirin (~1000mg) when I felt a migraine coming on. Almost a complete cure for me, much better than the medicine my doctor prescribed for me. So, for anyone else reading, like everything with migraines, your mileage may vary.
Yeah I’ve heard about that, but I haven’t been able to find it in Canada. I’ve tried a combination aspirin + caffeine pill, but it didn’t seem to work as well as coffee.
This is a bit odd considering Excedrin (OTC migraine product; not especially great compared to the prescription ones, but it's easier to get) contains caffeine as one of the ingredients. It seems like you're speaking from anecdotal experience rather than any sort of scientific study? If that's not true, can you provide some evidence for your recommendation?
Anecdotally (and I was under the impression that this was more widely known), caffeine can both cause migraines and give relief from them. Kind of a “hair of the dog” effect.
So as a general recommendation, "if you haven't already, try eliminating caffeine and see if it helps you?" That is probably more useful than "eliminate coffee, trust me."
Yes, that's the recommendation I would give. I personally don't think that eliminating my 1cup/day of coffee has a major effect on my migraines (based on my long history), but I would expect it to be almost curative for some others.
I switched to ginseng primarily. Green tea some but not much and not daily.
I cut out coffee for 3 weeks for another reason and the migraines went away.
They come back with stress, not enough breaks from mobile/monitors, and other unknowns.
Exercise daily getting your heart rate up has helped also.
There’s a migraine book out there about the exclusion diet where you slowly cut things out and make detailed logs. Log what you eat, what you did, felt, a super detailed journal. I never make it more than a few days of that.
Anyone who also gets debilitating vertigo instead of headaches when having migraines?
I’m suffering from vertigo for 17 years now—from multiple times per week to having it only a few times per month.
When having an attack/phase getting my head into another position triggers really strong vertigo which is strange.
Everything else is ruled out (including bppv).
Often times I also have blurry vision, things just feel out of proportion and I’m having a really tense feeling in my face/jaw. (Which may be associated to migraines).
I remember first hearing about this when I read the book LSD by Otto Snow as a teenager. It's kind of fascinating that tryptamines have been anecdotally known to treat migraines and cluster headaches since at least the early 1960s.
I myself am lucky to not suffer these, but the horror stories I've heard from my friends make me really sad that we are just now exploring this avenue of treatment.
My migraines were caused by cognitive dissonance and distortions in my thinking and emotions - a kind of fractured self that was out of touch with reality.
Psychedelics and marijuana helped me to integrate the conflicting aspects of my self. Then the migraines stopped coming.
I've heard about other people where the opposite happened - they ended up completely losing their minds.
Has anybody here ever gotten a migraine that started in one of your teeth? That's the most interesting start to one I've gotten, but I looked it up and couldn't find anything about it anywhere. Maybe it was a fluke.
Cefaly really helps me with my headaches. It uses electric pulses to overstimulate the nerves that end up in the pain-producing parts of the brain. I've been using it for more than a decade now.
Keto diet helped me a lot with my migraines. As soon as i started to eat more carbs again the frequency of my migraines increased. Also wine is a big trigger for me. Would be nice to try this.
For people in my family, white flour specifically, and also processed food in general, as well as things in the air such as VOCs (sources: plastics, furniture glue, "cleaning" products) are triggers.
Once they're eliminated or reduced, the migraines stop.
Has anyone successfully used accu-pressure mats (around $35) for migraines? Mine just helps me fall asleep, but many people swear by those with other problems, and my Mom has migraines.
Do you have an impacted wisdom tooth? Consider getting it extracted, even if it doesn't appear to be causing any problems. It can be the root cause of chronic migraines.
Is there a common definition of "migraine" in use here? Many of the comments here describe tension headaches, cluster headaches, and any other kind of headache lacking a formal diagnosis as a 'migraine'. Many also self-medicate their self-diagnosis.
Even the study itself is vague on the definition of 'migraine' other than stating the study was based on rumours of self-medication by self-diagnosed migraine sufferers. The article itself is paywalled, but I suspect subjects were recruited from a base of volunteers answering 'do you suffer from migraines' on a questionnaire.
There is, in fact, a medical definition of what a migraine is. It excludes tension headaches, cluster headaches, anxiety-induced headaches, earaches, back and neck injuries (chronic or acute), and even post-concussion headaches.
I do recreationally partake of psilocybin (for "spiritual" and simply entertainment reasons), and this was something that I personally have noticed: I no longer have migraines. Previously I suffered extreme migraines that would easily knock me out for a day, I couldn't take any medicine or I would vomit it back up, etc. I haven't since my first "shroom" experience.
The weird thing is that I get the pre-migraine experience at the same rate, it just isn't followed by a migraine. Previously I'd get the vision distortions that would get worse to the point that I could barely see, and then an extreme migraine would start. I still get those vision distortions (every week or two) just as frequently, but they're followed by just returning to normal.
This is obviously single case anecdotal, could be purely coincidental, and I don't encourage anyone to base any action on it, but it was something I literally had a discussion about this weekend.
Those distortions are generally called "auras"[1] (though my experience of them is more like a combination of TV static and tunnel vision). I find them to be potentially more unpleasant than the pain that follows, at least if I am not indoors and sitting down (trying to bike home during that is life-threatening; ditto for driving).
I do consume around three large coffees an average day. I would get a headache from caffeine withdrawal (not a migraine though) so it's been a pretty long time since I've really gone without caffeine.
Couldn't say whether caffeine is negative or positive as it's pretty much always been a component.
I stopped taking caffeine because of a problem with anxiety. My migraines have remained. I do find caffeine helps with the pain of a migraine though. I think sudden reduction in caffeine intake can trigger migraines...
Migraine medicine and other kinds of medicine I was given did not work at the time, so thinking they might be cluster headaches I turned to 4-aco-dmt, which is psilocin without the psilocybin, so no stomach nausea, but a bit weaker. It didn't stop a migraine once it had started, but it did work as a preventative. I did a little bit larger than a microdose once a week and had no pain, no migraines, no problems, for quite a long time. (A regular full sized dose I could take once every 12 days without migraines.)
I turned to 4-aco over mushrooms, because it was legal at the time, and no nausea. I believe it's still legal today, but I haven't kept up. Today, mushrooms are legal/deregulated in parts of the US, including where I live, so it's less of a concern.
Today I have a prescription medicine that works. I'm cognizant of taking a single drug for too long. When I look up what I'm currently taking (sumatriptan) people online complain it stops working at 7 years of use. This is great, because now I feel comfortable taking it for 5 years before needing to switch. However, the second I start needing more to function, I'm switching it out. I do not want a life long resistance. That needs to be avoided at all cost. When I was taking the 4-aco I was a bit more cautious, because I can't find online how long it works for migraines. I would rather keep it in my back pocket if I ever need it again, so I went off it the second I found a prescription drug that worked, despite that the 4-aco worked better.