Chronic Pain

Can you recommend any effective migraine product? I was just recently diagnosed of it and it seems that tylenol or any other paracetamol can't help me during the attacks. Thanks for your help.

I don't know of any over-the-counter medications that can really help much with Migraines. Unfortunately, they can also sometimes make matters worse because if you take them very often, they can have a rebound effect and actually cause more head pain.

If you've just been recently diagnosed, I'd like to recommend an excellent book that will help you understand more about Migraine disease and how to treat it. The book is Living Well with Migraine Disease and Headaches by Teri Robert. You can order it on Amazon.com. The author is also the lead expert on MyMigraineConnection.com There's tons of information on that site, including medications used to prevent and treat Migraines. There's also a very active forum where you can chat with others and find out how they're dealing with Migraines.

We're happy to have you here on ChronicPainConnection, and you're welcome here any time, but when it comes to Migraines, they can give you a lot more and better information there than I can, since that is their area of specialty.

I wish you well and hope you find the help you need there.

Best,
Karen

Hi Needmore,

Obviously you need to see a doctor and go over treatment options with him/her. There are dozens of therapies, treatments, and drugs available, which can work to prevent migraines from happening in the first place, lessen the frequency, lessen the severity of an episode, stop a migraine that's already starting, and work to relieve the pain once the migraine is in full force. Bottom line, you just have to keep trying different combinations until you find what works for you.

Personally I take what's known as a triptan drug at the first sign of a migraine; the triptans are a family of drugs which work in part by constricting the blood vessels in the brain. They're very hit or miss for me, sometimes they work great and knock the migraine out completely, sometimes they don't do a darned thing. The drugs also can have serious side effects, including nausea, drowsiness, and body aches. But there are a handful of different options in the triptan family, so if one in particular is causing you problems your doctor can prescribe you a different one and see how that goes.

Caffeine also seems to help me stave off a migraine sometimes, but for other people it can be a trigger--again, everyone's migraine therapy is different, you have to experiment to find what works for you. Some people meditate, some avoid red wine or chocolate--there are a lot of different ways to cope out there and unfortunately none of them is a one-size-fits-all solution.

Once I do have a full-on migraine, the only thing that really works for me for pain relief is darvocet. I take one 100mg darvocet or sometimes two, maybe take some compazine for the nausea if it's particularly bad, and that at least takes the edge off the pain.

Best of luck to you, I hope you find something that works. I've had pretty severe migraines for 25 years, but I've now found a therapy that works for me fairly well, and you will too.