Migraine - Self Help

When they occurred I was completely unable to work properly, and felt both as if I were going to vomit and have diarrhoea. Sometimes the migraines would occur as often as twice a week.

Having always been interested in trying to understand what causes something to happen in my body rather than simply dealing with symptoms, I tried many ways to define what was causing the migraines. For instance I have often had taken vitamins and I felt they were contributing. But when I stopped them migraines still occurred.

I went through all manner of such tests to see what the contributing factor was, and one thing that I did notice always occurred when a migraine started melting, was that I passed a lot of urine.

However, at that point I did not completely connect what was happening. The insight was arrived at when I was teaching in Northern Ireland. I was taking a weekend conference and was lodging with a family who were involved in running it, and so was eating with them. The food they gave me was very wholesome but incredibly salty.

Research has said that during a migraine swelling occurs and the brain cells became starved of oxygen. The nerve cells are damaged -- specifically the dendrites, the long, thin spikes that stretch from one nerve cell to another.

The kindly doctor then told me to sit still and not move. She went off somewhere and came back shortly with a cup of black coffee. Caffeine is a powerful diuretic, and not being a coffee drinker it had a very pronounced effect on me.

The effect was magical. Within a very short time I could feel the migraine beginning to fade. I also started passing a great deal of fluid from my system.

Since then I have known exactly what to do if a migraine begins or I feel it on the horizon. I immediately use something that will help my body to get rid of excess fluid. Coffee, for me is too much of a stimulant, so I tend to use some other form of diuretic. Cocoa is a gentler form of caffeine, as is black chocolate. But mostly I avoid salt in my diet.

Strangely, having talked to other migraine sufferers, some will not accept that salt might in any way cause a migraine. One man in particular loads his meals with salt and consistently suffers migraines. He has tried all the medical help you can get, and painkillers, migraine tablets, with no result.