I have put this information together for anyone who suffers from migraines.
This is something I’ve suffered from my whole life and has gradually changed as I’ve gotten older. Looking on the Internet I’ve found loads of information about them but very few places seem to bring it all together, so thus it’s easy to find if you know what to look for but otherwise its much harder
My Personal Experiance
My First Migraine
My first migraine attack was something I remember, even though it was over a decade ago. I think I was around 12-13 years old, basically when I hit puberty. I was in high school, sitting in an IT class, and all I can recall is struggling to keep focus. Obviously, I had no idea what was happening, so I kept trying to concentrate, thinking it would pass. Unfortunately, it only got worse no matter what I did, and at that point, I was panicking like mad.
I don’t remember everything that happened next, but based on my past experiences with migraines, I know that I must have had a full-blown migraine after the attack. Typically, my migraines start with a visual aura that lasts about 45 minutes (which still happens today), leading to a severe, throbbing headache along with an electric sensation in my eyes. This intense pain would make me nauseous and eventually vomit.
Soon after the attack started, I would have probably ended up in the school toilets, throwing up. I likely sought out my mom, who worked in the school kitchens, and she would have taken me home.
For years, my migraine episodes followed a similar pattern: visual aura leading to a debilitating headache, increased sensitivity to light, and bouts of vomiting. The headache would linger for about three days before I started feeling better.
Descovery and first trigger
At that time in my life, I had an attack about once a month. I would have had 1 or 2 more attacks before my mom, who always goes to the doctor when something is wrong, would have taken me. I was given a name for what was happening, a migraine, and was prescribed some awful-tasting little pills that came in a blue plastic box, which stored a few tablets at a time. You needed to place one on your tongue and let it dissolve. I don’t remember what they were called, but I can only assume they were Migralieve or something similar.
I remember still having attacks and the tablets not really doing much. Somewhere down the line, fairly quickly, it was discovered that cheese was a known trigger. At that time, I had cheese sandwiches every day for lunch, so they had to go. After cutting out cheese, my migraines seemed to stop completely, and for years I didn’t have even one attack.
Migraines return
I don’t fully remember at what age I started to get migraines again but I think it was when I was at university. I kind of remember doing university work on my laptop while the TV was on in the background and I kept switching between the laptop and TV and that was triggering my migraines. Took me a few times to suspect that this was the trigger and when I cut out doing that kind of screen switching they stopped again. Not for long though I started to get into a routine of about every 3-4 months between attacks on a regular basis and this was assuming that I didn’t do or eat anything that would cause an attack.
Between then and now
Over the course of a decade in many ways my migraines have gotten much worse in terms of frequency and what my triggers are, I now average 1 per 6-8 weeks and my food triggers have ballooned to include most known triggers, much to my irritation as eating food at buffets I have to be so wary of as I don’t know what they are and what they contain; there is an annoying upside though most foods that I can eat are very healthy and a chunk of things that I can’t eat (outside of home / restaurant) tend to be processed or ultra processed which may be tasty but are not very good for you, so I tend to stick to more simple meals and avoid anything overly fancy especially if I’ve not made it myself.
My actual migraines have changed also out of the 4 migraine stages I tend to now kind of skim through stage 3 the actual headache, I do get one now and again but nowhere near as severe as when I was younger; as a rule.