h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Pretty sure Beta Blockers are NOT painkillers, they influencethe heart rates (so used to treat various heart conditions) and generally relax you.

Also "Extreme Hunger" isn't really a trigger, rather a change in meal pattern is cited by many sufferers, which again leads to "chronic weekly headaches" around the weeken, when meal patterns are altered,

A current treatment being testes is Bottox, after people who had bottox for comestic reasons noticed a reductin in migraines, but this is not cheap and only being tested at the moment.

On the treatment side, Id add that there are two main methods,

symptomatic treatment, where you treat the sympton, either with painkillers, Tripans (a class of drug) and anti nausea treatments (important even if you don't suffer from nausea as the stomach reduces its ability to take in substances such as painkillers, so these treatments which are absorbed either via the gums or via suppositry can help the intake of pain relief)

Prophylactic (preventative) treatment, such as Beta Blockers and a few other classes are taken to prevent the attacks, or at least reduce the frequency of them. Hoever, they do have side effects, at the moment I am habving difficulty typing as the beta blockers I am on cause dry eyes, which make my contact lenses un-comfortable. Other treatments can lead to weight gain.

CH

Bottox is made from the bochelism (Dunno how to spell it) bacteria.
This kills ya!

My sensitivity threshold for flickering light is a LOT higher than 60hz - at least 100hz. I'm affected by fluorescent strip lighting at mains frequency (50hz AC leads to light emission at 100hz - one light pulse for each peak and each trough of the AC cycle). TV screens and CRT monitors are also in my 'run away' list; a couple of years ago I bought - at some expense - a 100hz 'overscan' monitor then cried all night when I found I still couldn't look at it for more than a few seconds without discomfort (as well as the more obvious reason for crying all night...). Now TFT screens have fallen in price, I've finally got a computer system I can actually use. Am I alone in this? I've also got some quite in-depth theories as to how lighting conditions trigger migraine, which I'll edit and post here soon I hope. Much solidarity to all: none of us deserve this.

I am glad you finally got a screen you can tollerate.
This condition is misunderstood by people who do not siffer it.
If I sit at a PC for very long periods I get bad heads, but not to any length that you do.

I look forward to reading your next entry on lighting conditions.

Whilst not that sensitive to flicker - I am more sensitive than most. Recently at my previous work their "wonderful" IS section (this is about 1000 strong) upgraded all 10000 odd PCs to Windows 2000, but negleted to set the refresh rate - Windows 2K defaults to the lowest if mass installed. I lost track of how many I set right before I left, in fact I still do when-ever I am back there for any reason.

Oh, and the anti-nasea pills used under the gums I mentioned above. When I wrote that I hadn't used any. This last week I have had to (got one in now) and the are brilliant, not only does the queasy feeling stop but the get your system going again so pain killers you may jhave taken suddenly start working, in fact you fell much better - well I do. For reference they are called Buccastem M - prescription only

CH

Damn. I seem either to have mislaid my notes on this subject or thrown them away in a fit of petulance; I'll have to try from memory;

The gist is that migraine may result from reflex frustration, i.e. when an otherwise reflexive action is repeatedly prevented from completion: a good example being the bite reflex, which is chronically frustrated in dental malocclusion (this is when the teeth on each side of the mouth do not bite together symmetrically, and is a known contributory factor in migraine). It seems possible (my theory) that this causes an ever-increasing build-up of bioelectric charge in the motor neurons concerned, which eventually bleeds over into adjacent brain areas and does the bad thing. [Preceding passage not so much dumbed down as de-smarta***ed for the benefit of anyone who hasn't only-not-got-a-neurophys-degree-cos-they-can't-concentrate-in-labs...]

In the case of (flickering) lighting problems, it's the ocular tracking reflexes which are affected i.e. the mechanism by which the eyes follow moving objects. Flickering light which is too fast to resolve into a 'flashing' visual phenomenon but still just slow enough to trigger (some people's) ocular tracking reflex can both trigger and disrupt this process. The disruption occurs because as the eyes scan from point to point across the visual field the light intensity at each 'target' point is varying too rapidly to be compensated. The triggering process is harder to explain but I'll try to illustrate:-

Imagine you're reading a book sitting in a library. A moth flies across the edge of your visual field and without conscious intention you glance up to follow its flight. This is what my eyes try to do in supermarkets, except of course the 'moths' are omnidirectional and omnipresent, so it's impossible for the reflex ever to complete itself.

By extension, the same argument can be applied to spot-lighting, venetian blinds/dark-and-light bars and straining to read in low overall light levels. Here it's the pupillary dilation reflex which is stymied in much the same way.

It's also quite important to realize (whether or not the above is an accurate description of the neurological processes involved) that you needn't be consciously aware of the flickering/bright spot/whatever as these reflexes are mediated by the brainstem which receives direct input from the optic nerve independantly of the visual cortex (where we 'see' things).

I've posted some of this (in this thread) but it seems likely to be ignored so I'm going to repost to the original "forum" thread and delete here

Botox is made up of botulism, BUT it has been treated so it won't kill you. When I used to teach kids that had cerebral palsy, one of my students was very tight in his lower legs and he had injections of this to relax the muscles in his legs so he could stand up and take steps instead of having his legs bent at the knees 24/7.
Please don't be alarmed.

-gobie (1509984)