I’ve suffered from migraine headaches since I was a child. My mom tells a story about how she found me in the car seat with a blanket over my head when I was 3 years old. When she asked what I was doing I complained that the light hurt.
Growing up with regular headaches and few treatment options was frustrating, but I was fortunate that my migraines were relatively rare until I was in my twenties. By this time the available treatment options had progress beyond Advil or more potent analgesics to triptans and prophylactic therapies. With the help of a specialists I started feeling some control over my migraines even if only sporadically.
Through my twenties and in to my thirties the frequency and duration of my migraines continued to increase. Where in high school I would have a migraine every month or two, now I was having multiple days of migraines every week or so. The abortive medication I was using would usually work quickly, but by the next day the headache was back. My worst nightmare was to run out of my meds right before a new migraine hit.
Overcoming my distaste for taking drugs every day prophylactically my neurologist and I started trialling different drugs and supplements to see if I could reduce the frequency and severity of these migraines. I was not in a good habit of tracking my headaches, and usually resorted to counting sumatriptan tablets taken since my last refill.
I tried a few different things daily but there wasn’t much process to it. In some cases the decision to pass on a treatment was based on side effects that were disruptive, but in other cases it was largely a gut feel about if it was working or not. Despite the lack of rigor I eventually found something that started helping in noticeable ways.
When my wife and I had our daughter a lot of my self-care fell apart. This is not uncommon, but in my case this meant losing much of the control over my migraines that I had gained in recent years. Managing migraines is often an unstable equilibrium like this. So long as you stay balanced things are mostly fine, but if you let something slip a little that can trigger a cascade of problems.
Caring for a child take a lot of energy and attention, and in the early days leaves you very little in reserve for yourself. I stopped running and paying attention to my diet. I gained weight and lost sleep. Within a year I was having multiple days of migraine every week or so.
Only in the last year have I started to feel that control return. Stepping back and rebuilding what was working before took time and focus and still isn’t done. Right now exercise is my focal point for reining in control over my health. Even though exercise hasn’t ever directly influenced my migraines, its something I can do that makes me feel good, and over time it will help me manage other parts of my life that are related to my migraines (blood pressure, sleep, stress).
Getting back into running (my exercise of choice) is hard, but forcing the first week to happen and then leaning in to the repetition works for me. The willpower required for that next run gets a little bit easier to summon each time.
I’ve heard that the most consistent thing about migraines is how they are universally tied up with change. When someone says that weather is a trigger, that doesn’t mean that low barometric pressure causes their headaches, but that the change from high to low triggers them. For me going from high stress to low stress sets me off. When your life is feeling chaotic or out of control, that’s a good description of maximum change. Wrangling that control, in any way, is a first step to containing and minimizing that unwanted change.