Migraine, herpes and erectile disfunction = CGRP?
Hi! Found your board in google, please, let me know if you think there is better forum for this discussion, but I did not find any. All medical boards are closed or without members anymore. I am trying to investigate my migraine and other problems and link them together.
About me: 35 years old male, 180 cm, 85 kg. Migraine started when I was 18 years old. Its migraine with aura, always with prodrome, which can start even week before the migraine. I am pretty sure that my migraine is related to genetics - my mom also has migraine. My medicine is Ibuprofen which helps me good with blocking headaches, recently I' ve found that Magnesium supplements are also good and now I have migraine less often.
I also have some other issues, one of them is herpes simplex. I had a lot of outbreaks in the past until I found that I have serious D vitamin deficiency, then I started to use D3 and reached it's level in blood to 70 ng/ml and now I have herpes outbreaks very rare, but still have. But I know some people which never had herpes, however was in a contact with infected people for many times. I see, that in my family herpes is a common issue, so I conclude that also this is a genetic factor.
Third thing is my erectile dysfunction in migriane periods and prodrome period. Usually I have no problems with this, but when migraine is coming close, then I loosing my sensitivity and erection stability.
So I decided to take a look at possible reasons of all these problems as they all are related to neurons and vessels and there is one thing that may be the same for all these issues, and it's CGRP (calcitonin gene-related peptide), which antagonists are used to threat migraine. I did not find any researches in this theme, but for me it looks so logical. This peptide works as immune system in neirons where herpes sits, so I conclude that my CDRP system is not working well, but what I cannot understand is, that why migraine is affecting my erection, because as I understand, then migraine conditions leads to expanded vessels, what should make opposite effect. Also I read that CDRP antagonist medicine is blocking there receptors what means that blood vessels are not expanding and erection should become worse, but they do not say that these drugs have such side effect (I do not use these drugs). So this is what I'd like to discuss, maybe someone has any biochemists or know nay forums where this thing can be discussed?
Hi there! Thanks for sharing this candid account of your struggles. It takes courage to do that and we are glad you're here. I am not an expert, so I can't give medical advice for your safety and my first suggestion would always be to visit your doctor.
Migraine can cause sexual dysfunction in both men and women. In some people, sex can even be a migraine trigger. Considering that migraine is a neurological disease and that libido and arousal response are also neurological to some degree, I'm not surprised that you're going through this, but unfortunately I don't know why. You may be onto something with the vascular discussion. Some medications used for migraine can also affect sexual fucntion.
Regarding CGRPs, have you ever used any of the CGRP antagonist drugs (Aimovig, Emgality, Ajovy to name a few)? I wonder if a different medication regimen could address both your migraine attacks and the possible connection to your erectile dysfunction.
In general, we encourage our members to see a migraine specialist (not just a neurologist, specialists are those who have had additional training to focus on migraine specifically) whenever possible. It's also worth mentioning that in some cases, erectile dysfunction can be a sign of a separate issue, including heart problems, so you may want to get checked out just to be on the safe side.
You are welcome here. All the best in your investigation, please keep us posted on how you're feeling!
Hi! Well, I don't think ED is an issue of something else in my case, because I have good erection in other time periods, but bad in prodrome period, which I feel can be even for weeks, when I also usually start to loose my sleep.
I just try to link some of my health problems and seems that they show to one reason + - . There is something about CGRP related to migraine, but also related to herpes (I'd say it could be great to explore if people with migraine have herpes more often), what I've read they both live in trigeminal nerve and CGPT regulates or is involved into this verve's innervation and/or inner immunity. As I am male, I also see the problems with erection related to migraine and again CGRP and NO are close to each other and both are involved into vascular mechanisms/expansion, which takes a place in ED. I could go even deeper with for example panic attacks which I had for all my youht, and again we come to serotonin and mayne CGRP or related peptides. What I see is that many things are related and I see very bright correlation for myself, and cause seems to be same or some or mechanisms that are a cause of many other problems. Would be interested to discuss this with any good specialists, but I do not have such. Also medical forums with good doctors or professors are closed to outer public. I tried to look for such forums in google, this one was the only one which looks like more or less alive. 😀And no, I did not use any specific drugs like CGRP antagonist or triptans, Ibuprophene helps me a lot at the moment. I had very intensive migraines when I was younger, had light, sound phobia and very intensive pain, at the moment I can deal with ibuprophene, main problem with migraine now is aura and dump head, difficulty to read, understand during the aura, sometimes tingling, but my main interest now is to link all my problems together to understand the mechanism of my migraine, because I see clearly that at least 2-3 problems are caused by the same reason.
Thank you so much for sharing this part of your journey with us. You are asking some really good questions and I appreciate the way you are seeking connections in your experiences and medications. I know you mentioned you've been seeking a good place to ask these questions but that you do not have a good specialist. I do believe that your questions, however, are best asked of a migraine specialist. I appreciate your level of curiosity and drive to get to the bottom of all of these challenges and I wish I could be the one to provide that but we are not doctors. I could not find any information on the correlation between CGRP and ED - nor the level of detail you are seeking on these other good questions. Perhaps someone in our community with chime in with some relevant information for you, but in the meantime, I encourage you to seek an evaluation/consultation with a migraine specialist who can walk through these questions with you applying the level of expertise and knowledge base that is required and that you deserve. We have a couple of resources that may help you find a migraine specialist here: https://headaches.org/resources/healthcare-provider-finder/. And here: https://americanmigrainefoundation.org/find-a-doctor/. I know folks who travel states away for good migraine care and I also am aware that since the pandemic, some doctors are continuing to offer telemed appointments which may help in your case and give you the opportunity to get your questions answered. Really wishing you the best on your quest for this important information! Please stay in touch- and if you find these answers- we'd be grateful if you would share them with us. Warmly- Holly -migraine.com team.
Thank you for your support, Holly! I will take a look on your links, however it may be too far to travel from my hole at the edge of Europe. II think that there is not so much what doc could discover with my case except giving me pills, but I think this is good topic for science, if such scientist would be available to discuss and think about these issues connected together, at least so it seems to me. 😀 Once I solved so many health problems with only one thing, that now I believe that everything is so connected and often you need to search for answers not there where you think they are at the moment. It was D vitamin for me.. I had huge deficit, something like 6 ng/ml in blood, when I reached it to value 70, I started new life. So this is my recommendations for everyone who reads this - deal with D vitamin, don't believe many docs that 30 ng/ml is enough and you will feel it's power. I don't think there is so easy answer to migraine, but I think that when you connect another health issues which are related, then answer can come faster.
Yep, but this is a big quest where to find such doctor-scientist who would be interested to investigate the case and try to connect these different issues together based on my story. =)
As for magnesium, I did not decide yet if it really helped me or not. I started to take it on February this year. I usually have about 1 week active migraine phase, then it pauses for half a year and comes again with 1-4 weeks prodrome time. So when I took first big dose, migraine disappeared the next day, so I did not have 1 week migraine attacks, so I concluded that it works. Started to take 200 mg of this one: https://www.pharmanord.eu/products/bio-magnesium It is expensive and consists of:
Magnesium carbonate
Magnesium hydroxide
Magnesium acetate
I know that usually high doses are needed, but it's too much for daily usage by my opinion and also too expensive. So now I had one more attack after half a year (a bit less), and high doses taken also stopped it in 2 days.. So seems, that it works, but not completely. As I said before, I noticed long prodrome period in this time with ED. Now after this period I have no problems with ED, everything is fine, but it was 1 month period + with very bad sleep, so connection is very strong among those symptoms.
What migraine improvements do you feel with your magnesium?Thank you for sharing more information about your experiences with magnesium. This topic has been raised repeatedly on our site (regarding what type to take, how much, etc): https://migraine.com/search?s=magnesium. You might be interested in skimming those resources. I personally only recently added glycinate to the citrate I've been taking. My migraine pattern is very messy and frequent (daily) so it can be hard for me to evaluate what's working and how well. I do think I've had some improvement since adding in the glycinate in the severity of pain (not frequency). Again, this is hard to tell at times. Also hard to tell as I'm taking a number of preventatives and rescue medications in addition to this so hard to assign blame or efficacy to one or another specifically.
I wish you luck in finding a specialist who has the proper curiosity and willingness to explore your case and your relevant questions. I'm thinking your best course is to call (or contact through email) a number of specialists to see if any respond to your request to partner in this way. Warmly- Holly -migraine.com team.
