How I “cured” my Migraine.
In an ideal world, some physician would solve any solvable problem your health face. In the real world; your health is your responsibility, and you should be as diligent as possible.
I still remember what it seems now, circa 45 years later, as my first time. I went to a place in Caracas named “Le Drugstore”. It was popular and famous for a long time, in a city which could have been called still as “friendly”, a condition which will change dramatically in the following 30 years. I was enjoying my newly gained liberty, as I was allowed to use public transport to come home from secondary school. That day, I decided to go with a friend (which I can’t recall, sadly his face is lost in my mind's nooks) to eat some hot dogs for lunch after school. Le Drugstore was located in the first mall of Caracas, called “Centro Comercial Chacaito” settled in the downtown. Probably my visit happened around 1977, it was already “the maturity” of the place, which opened in 1970 and suffered some changes during the years.
At the moment, a mini-store inside Le Drugstore, selling hot dogs with German sausages (made in a German 160 years old settlement in Venezuela called “La Colonia Tovar”) and German sauce, was a bestseller. We enjoyed our hot dogs and headed to our homes. Using public transport was always a small nightmare in Caracas. Even 45 years ago, heat, noise, bumpy roads, old buses, smog, heavy traffic made a stressful combination. My own nightmare started some hours later, already at home. This was the first of thousands of future episodes. It began with a not so strong but unusual one-sided headache and ended with the hot dogs splattered on the floor near my bed. My training as a migraine sufferer just began.
My Migraine Signature.
In the following years, it became clear that I had a problem with my head. In the next 6 months, I got my second episode, and then a third, and so on. With increasing frequency, I was getting one-sided intense headaches. Initially, an aspirin was enough to calm it, later I needed two. Sleeping through the pain was also effective. I remember waking up with a clear head, no pain, everything fine. In those moments, recalling the pain 12 hours before, life seemed splendorous, it was a great feeling, the only positive thing in this curse. After some years, the aspirin spoiled my esophagus, I got gastroesophageal reflux. It was time to try something different. At the time, a headache pill called Parcel was heavily publicized in Venezuela. I tried it out, it worked. One pill killed my headaches in two or three hours. Some years later I would need two.
I learned that my one-sided headaches were characteristics of a quite common illness: migraine. Usually, migraines came preceded by an “aura”, where the people experience some visual or even auditory phantom feelings. I don’t know about auras, as I never had one. I always get aura-free migraines. My headache starts with a barely perceptible discomfort in one side of my head, randomly left or right. The discomfort usually progresses in the next hour to a definite pain, and if it is not treated, the pain becomes almost unbearable in the next one or two hours. At this stage, nausea is also present and of course, vomiting. As I totally hate throwing up, I need to stay horizontal in bed, with absolutely no motion. An intense concentration and willpower are necessary to not vomiting. Allowing the headache to progress in this way is the worst possible scenario. I managed to identify the early stages of the pain, and immediately attack it with two Parcels, which were my standard solution. Proceeding in this way, I had a good chance to be pain-free in two or three hours, avoiding a lost day sunk in torture. Therefore, I always had in my pocket, at least, two pills of this painkiller.
My illness was not static in time. The former description corresponds to my 20 to 35 age. The frequency of the episodes was also variable. I had good times, with no headache for 3 or 4 months. Also bad times, with more than 5 events in a month, sometimes even 2 in one week. At some moment, after my 40, sleeping lost its migraine healing power. I remember going to sleep with pain and waking up with pain. Also, the characteristic one side headache was substituted sometimes with a front head initial pain, migrating to one side just at the vomiting stage. A migraine hangover appeared in the last 15 years. When a headache escaped my control reaching vomiting, the next day, nevertheless I felt no pain, I had an ailment sensation in the body, similar to a backwash but having drunken no alcohol.
Over time, I became an expert on my headaches. With my early attack method, I lived even years without a major event. Nevertheless, I have identified many trigger conditions, usually, my migraine appeared out of the blue, apparently without reason. My list of trigger events, ordered according to their importance, is the following:
- Any red vine or Baileys.
- Any alcohol.
- Sleeping in the afternoon.
- Skipping a meal.
- Sleeping too little.
- Sleeping too much.
- Stress.
- Some yellow food dyes.
The main characteristic of my migraine was its randomness. The former list just shows circumstances whit a high probability to cause me a migraine. It could happen that one or more have been present and caused no headache.
Side Effects.
I seek medical help many times. The results were variable. Some asked me what were I doing to escape an event, after my answer, an: “OK keep doing that, it’s fine”, came on. I “liked” very much what a German doctor, which I consulted around 1995 in Frankfurt, told me (possibly during a high-frequency migraine crisis): Look, there is no solution for your problem now in the medicine. If you have found a way to cope with it, stick to it. Do periodical research about the state of the art of Migraine treatment, and good luck. With the advent of the Internet, that was exactly what I did.
One Parcel pill contained 500 mg of Paracetamol, 1 mg of dihydroergotamine, and some Caffeine. Already in the prospect, which comes with the medicine, it’s stated how dangerous for your liver would be to swallow over 4 gr of paracetamol in less than 24 hours. I made sure to never take more than 2 pills a day. However, even with a conservative 2 events in a month, I have swallowed more than 1 Kg of paracetamol during my life so far; what about the long-term effects of this drug? I asked once a physician about my concerns and he laughed in my face. He said: don’t you think that with the widespread use of paracetamol, there would be thousands of deaths if your worries were true? Well, the fact is, there are thousands of paracetamol-related liver injuries worldwide. According to this study, only in Australia in 10 years, 115 patients were reported with liver injuries due to paracetamol. This means, rounding, 12 cases per year in a population of 26 million. We are reaching 8 billion persons in the world. Assuming the Australian population as representative (why not?), should be 3700 liver injuries due to paracetamol in the world in a year. Are all the reported cases due to overdose? For many years there were no studies on the long-term use of paracetamol. At least I couldn’t find anyone. Just in recent years, some reviews appeared, like this, or one more informal. In any case, comparing the data, my mean paracetamol intake density was quite low. Some 15 years ago, I realized Parcel’s (actually, Parcel got out of the market around 2005, but several substitutes appeared with exactly the same content, however, I will stick to the name for simplicity) important part for me was not paracetamol, but dihydroergotamine (DHE).
According to this link (which is also a great source of general info about migraine), a chronic migrainous is in danger to suffer from long-term side effects caused by the painkillers. As I wrote before, I never managed to be clear about the possible long-term damages caused by paracetamol. Just now, when I almost stopped using it, seems to be clear that indeed paracetamol was safe at the dosage I was taken. But what about DHE?
There is this story about the ergot fungus. Apparently in the middle ages and later, the wheat infection by this mould was common. The spoiled grain was used for making bread and eaten by humans, which got ergotism. Ergotism is a neurological condition with manifestations like convulsions and “mad” behaviour. Ergotism is the malady caused by Ergotamine, the substance produced by the ergot fungus. To explain the irrational actions during the witchcraft executions in Salem and Europe, some researchers advanced the idea that ergot poisoning caused the insane conduct of the supposed witches. However, exist those who deny this hypothesis. I read about this for the first time around 1980. In that article, which I remember belonged to Discover Magazine, the burning sensation usually in the legs of the ergotism victims was commented. DHE is a compound based on Ergotamine, with fewer side effects.
Guess what? I developed some years ago strong burning sensations in my legs muscles. First in the left leg and later in both. They usually appeared after long walks, and they were quite unpleasant. Fortunately, they have almost disappeared since I slowed my Parcel intake.
You may think, after reading my story to this point, that I was obsessed with migraines all my life and was a constant “migraine researcher”. The truth is the opposite. I was always trying to forget my problem. Almost nobody knew about it but the closest people to me, like my wife. I assumed it was something I need to live with and try to minimize its negative effects on my life. Any chronic ailment is not a good conversation subject, people will not comprehend you. Just those who ever suffered a migraine attack understand that this is not just another headache. Letting a migraine advance means to be “out of the game” for the next 24 or 48 hours. It can ruin your life. I was quite aware that maybe I was damaging my health in the long term with the Parcel intake, but I had no alternative. And yes, I tried out other medicines with disastrous results. Even when I got a “brilliant” idea, it took me usually months to put it into practice. For example, after reading several articles about migraines, I concluded that the migraine trigger substances must be in my blood before an attack; what if I “cleanse” my blood just when I notice the first signals of an imminent headache? I waited until a migraine showed up on a weekend at home and start to drink a litter of water every half an hour. After some encouraging initial results, a full-fledged migraine attack washed away my efforts. Besides, it would have been quite stupid to carry 4 litters of water all the time. To summarize, I became quite sloppy with my condition, accepted its inevitability, and keep swallowing the two pills. I regret my position now that I know the solution was so near.
The Light at the End of the Tunnel.
I read the first time about the correlation between magnesium and migraines, around 10 years ago. According to the references in this publication “Why all migraine patients should be treated with magnesium”, the positive effects of magnesium intake on chronic migraine sufferers was reported in the scientific literature already in 1995. Ten years ago I tried to take magnesium and I noticed no improvement in my condition. Recently I randomly stumbled on a new article about magnesium and migraines, and I decided to give magnesium another chance. This time I found a mineral supplement with 250 mg of Magnesium Carbonate. After just two weeks of 1 tablet daily intake, the changes were dramatic. The frequency of my migraine events decreased around 10 times. Even when I get a headache, it never progresses to the vomiting phase. I’m not carrying the two parcel pills in my pocket anymore, I don’t need them. I can even drink red vine, Baileys, or beer without severe consequences. The landscape of triggering conditions also changed. Now the main trigger event is to have a nap in the afternoon. If I fall asleep, always wake up with a disgusting side headache. In that case, I take my usual solution and get rid of it in one hour. But even if I don’t take anything, the pain is not progressing, is bearable. My problem is not anymore a problem.
I’m a scientist, then I needed to know what would happen if I stop taking magnesium. Well, it is quite interesting. After one week, there was no observable difference. Just when passed two weeks my original condition started to appear again. The progress is however quite slow. It took me a full month without magnesium, to become again a chronic migraine sufferer. It is clear that anything that is magnesium depleted in my body, has a refill dynamics of weeks. My 45 years tale leaves me a bitter savoir about our human common knowledge access and my own behavior.
“Disclaimer” and Conclusions.
Initially, I thought to include the usual disclaimer about any advice, you the reader could extract from this text. I mean: you should not take any substance without consulting your physician blah, blah, blah (you know that “barbarians” are called so because Romans, instead “blah” used “bar” as a mock for something they didn’t understand?). Then I thought, I could do better.
If you have read until this point, probably you are a chronic migrainous looking for help. Of course, the best source of advice you can get comes from your medic. Medical science is a complicated one, and physicians devoted their lives to become experts. You could never reach their level, researching the internet about your health problems. Yet, they fail miserably sometimes. For example, how is it possible that magnesium is not a mainstream treatment for chronic migraines? Google “chronic migraine” + treatment. In how many hits is magnesium even mentioned? Surely is there, hidden in “dietary complements” as an anecdotal story. Out of the 10 first findings in Google, I found magnesium as a solution in two cases, well buried, down under, in maybe some “alternative” or “natural” solutions. And I wonder why? I advance some possible explanations:
- My headache is exceptional, I do not belong to the migrainous mainstream.
- Migraine has diverse etiology, therefore seeking a unique solution is nonsense.
- Maybe the magnesium, to be absorbed, needs to be in a specific chemical compound. If the person is not taking the right one, she or he will think it is not acting on the headaches. Is this the explanation for the failure on my first attempt with magnesium?
- It’s another case of William Gibson’s quote: “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed”. Or, the physicians do not care enough about papers like this one.
- The conspiratorial theories about “Big Pharma” are totally or partially certain. The medical system is paid to administer to their patient just those remedies which produce high revenues, doesn’t matter the side effects.
I must confess, I don’t like or believe in conspiratorial theories. In my mind, they are just another case of “obvious but wrong solutions”. However, given my dramatic improvement with magnesium, I am prone to cast doubts on everything. As always, things are neither black nor white, but a shade of gray. Migraine is an involved illness. Most probable it has many etiologies, and ways to express its damages according to the genotype of each person. Maybe, I’m lucky because the origin in me is only traceable to this lack of magnesium in some of my cells. Beyond, there is an almost obvious disdain in the medical mainstream state of the art, toward non-complex solutions. And by non-complex solutions, I mean substances that are not produced by painstaking research, double-blind tests, etc. Therefore, the case of magnesium curing complex and devastating suffering as migraine is an oxymoron for them. Finally, yes, why should Big Pharma promote the use of mineral-like magnesium from they can’t get much if any profit?
Regarding my involvement with my own condition, it’s something you should not copy. The info about magnesium was out there, just I was too confident in the medical advice to search for it. I could have found it, had I researched intensively enough, 20 or 25 years ago. Even before the Internet, there were quite effective methods to find any paper generated by human science.
The moral of this story? Be skeptical, be strongly skeptical regarding your health or anything important for yourself. Don’t doubt the good intention of the experts (physicians in this case) toward your problem, but if the solution is not obvious, or is not in their reach, they will not do the hard work for you. Good intentions are tainted with prejudices and distrust. People, any people, even scientists or physicians, tend to believe what their own experience taught is usually effective. That’s why some successful theories become a kind of religion among the scientist; nevertheless, 100% experimental verification is impossible (try to publish in a refereed physics journal a paper criticizing the “big bang”, even with a good argument). That’s why Mauskop and Varughese call to give magnesium to any migraine patient 10 years ago, got more or less unheard.