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Drastic shift in Headaches

I'm a 35 year old female. I've been dealing with migraines since I was 17 years old. In my 20's they were severe, and I hopped from one Rx preventative/abortive drug to the next. As my 30's rolled around my migraines became less frequent and less severe along with my implementation of a lot of various non medicinal remedies that didn't make them go away, they just made them less severe and less frequent. These included massage, acupressure treatment, essential oils, drinking lots of water daily,

I am now perplexed. I was on a really nice downward trend and now I have almost daily migraines always centered around my temple or my eye or somewhere in that region. I've struggled with anemia being a contributing factor to my headaches in the past, but I was just checked a week ago and my blood count is great! I drink lots and lots of water, very minimal caffeine and no matter how much I sleep I still get these daily migraines. These have become my new norm in the last couple months. No change to my environment, stress level, etc. I don't take any medications at all. What could it be?

I'm trying massage, exercise and juicing to maybe increase any circulation problems I might be having as I know that can cause migraines, but these daily headaches are REALLY interrupting my life and disabling me. I feel like I've lost control of my life and I have no idea what to do. I don't have very good health insurance, and my experience with doctors is their only solution is to want to put you on medication. I'd like to explore alternatives. In general I feel very, very tired a lot of the time and don't get much accomplished because I'm dealing with these migraines.

  1. Hi lcgreen17,

    Thank you for your question and being part of the Migraine.com discussion forum - we're glad you're here!

    I'm sorry to hear you are having an uptick in migraine attack frequency - I know how frustrating that is. I know you mentioned you don't take medications, but is there any chance you are taking something every day, or near daily to help relieve the pain? Here's the thing - if we take migraine medications and/or pain relievers, whether the are over-the-counter or prescription, more than two to three days a week, we run the risk of getting medication overuse headache, or moh which was formerly called rebound. If we are in an moh cycle, our migraine attacks will be more difficult to treat and we can end up in a daily cycle of pain that too is hard to break. You can read more about moh here; http://migraine.com/blog/help-how-can-i-not-overuse-migraine-medications/.

    It's not uncommon for our migraine attack patterns and triggers to change over time. You may want to keep a detailed migraine diary to see if you can identify these. We have more information on keeping a migraine diary here; https://migraine.com/blog/keeping-migraine-diary-basics/.

    We have a section on complementary/alternative therapies you can read about here; https://migraine.com/complimentary-and-alternative-therapies/.

    Will you keep me posted on how you are doing?
    Nancy

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