Last month on a trip to China with my family, I was confronted head on with what 1 in 7 of us regularly struggle: a migraine. [1]
It started innocently enough - my youngest told me about colors swimming in front of her eyes and that she was tired. Thinking that this was nothing more than travel fatigue, my husband and I carried her around the Terracotta Warrior Museum to let her rest, but her pain continued and seemed to hit a crescendo where she would bury her head in her jumper and cover her ears to block out all stimuli.
As someone who barely ever gets a headache, let alone a migraine, I had a hard time understanding just how painful this was. Migraines are inherited but research published last week in the journal PLOS Genetics shows that some with ancestry from colder climes, whether from Northern Europe or elsewhere, carry a gene that allows them to better sense the cold but can also inflict them with sudden onset migraines. [2]
Unfortunately, what may have once improved survival rates can now have crippling effect in daily life. In my daughter's case, as soon as she began to see an aura, we had to scramble to get an eyemask on, earplugs in and a cold bottle of water on her forehead while finding as quiet a place as possible for her to lie down. But the worst part was that her pain was so severe that she could not stop shrieking and crying for up to an hour at a time. You can imagine the concerned looks we got!!
We think her trigger was an overnight train journey from Beijing to Xi'an during which the men in the next compartment smoked all night. Since the windows on this Chinese state run train were locked, the train was at capacity and we were exhausted, we had no choice but to make the best of it. Being a child, my daughter was desperate to sleep on the top bunk, opposite to where her elder sister had already set up camp, but, in retrospect, also where the higher density of smoke was. More pollution crowds out oxygen. With less sleep too, it was the perfect set-up for a migraine.
Naturally, whenever my daughter's attacks would hit, we would try to get her away from triggers like the strong Chinese cigarette smoke and car exhaust.
At the same time, I mistakenly thought that the usual emergency headache go-to's, paracetomol and ibuprofen, would work. When they didn't, I spoke with several different Chinese pharmacists about alternatives and was offered a variety of painkillers, including one that needed to be administered by syringe (!), and even amoxycillin, an antibiotic - which just goes to show how inexact a science migraine treatment can be.
In the end, it was a Chinese government official who hosted us to a banquet that found our migraine solution. Having witnessed my daughter having an attack during dinner, she kindly contacted her personal doctor, a well-regarded Traditional Chinese Medicine healer near Beijing's Summer Palace. In addition to advising that we check my daughter's spleen, the TCM doctor recommended the dried root of a Chinese orchid, known in the West as 'Gastrodin'.
It turns out that in a 2018 study published in the journal, Frontiers in Pharmacology, Gastrodin prevented migraines by modulating the neurotransmitters that go haywire during an episode and reducing accompanying inflammation. [3]
Gastrodin does not take immediate effect, but needs to build up in the system, preferably for 90 days. My daughter was able to take it for only 7 days before her migraines disappeared, taking 1 Life Extension version of Gastrodin daily. Since she was still having attacks on days 1 and 2 of Gastrodin, we added MigraLiev, an American migraine supplement containing magnesium, vitamin B2 and feverfew [4], along with some alpha lipoic acid [5], all of which have shown some promise in studies. A week of prevention ended 12 attacks over 16 days.
She still continues to take her supplements to pre-empt further attacks, but we will try to taper to discover what the minimum effective dose is for her. I have done all of this with the blessing of her GP, who admits that migraines are bio-individual and everyone needs their own strategies to tackle them. Because the NHS pediatric neurology department to which my daughter has been referred is booked solid for the next 3-4 months, we have had to try to hack this ourselves.
While we are waiting to see the neurologist, I've arranged to take her into the hyperbaric oxygen chamber with me, both as a preventative for what are incredibly debilitating attacks, but also as a way to address any possible 'white matter lesions' that can accompany migraines experienced with auras. The research on this is still conflicting with some studies showing that females who experience migraines with auras in particular are more susceptible to silent brain infarcts which show up on MRI's as whitish lesions. [6]
[7] HBOT has been shown to successfully treat brain damage from strokes or traumatic brain injury even several years after the event. [8] I have been in the chamber with children before who don't seem fazed at all by the process and am doing this with my GP's blessing.
If you or any family members suffer with migraines, it might be worth trying Gastrodin, which doesn't appear to have any side effects [9], unlike butterbur, a popular herbal remedy. [10] I have also done research on CBD oil and migraines and think that these would also be an effective alternative. Because parents cannot legally administer this to children in the UK yet, it is not an obvious alternative for parents, but I know people who say they have had 'ice pick migraines' and took a single drop of high quality CBD oil under the tongue and had them immediately resolve. I'll look at the wonders of CBD oil in a future post, but in the meantime, suffice it to say that if you're an adult with migraines, you should check it out, especially as it is not addictive and does not have any THC's which are the harmful part of marijuana you take in when you smoke it. [11]
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Do you have migraines? What has your experience been? Are you able to power through the pain or do you need to withdraw to recover? Does it impact your productivity or social life? For my daughter's sake and other readers, I'd be so really grateful if you could pay it forward and share your own hacks.
[1] https://www.migrainetrust.org/about-migraine/migraine-what-is-it/facts-figures/
[2] https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/52484/title/Genetic-Adaptation-to-Cold-Brought-Migraines-With-It/
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5801292/
[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15447697
[5] https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/jmf.2017.0068
[6] https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/139/7/2015/2464253
[7] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7775175
[8] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5110132/
[9] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5801292/
[10] https://nccih.nih.gov/health/butterbur
[11] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321653.php
Photo credit: Asdrubal Luna, Unsplash