My Goat
9So why have I not been posting? It’s not bc I’m lazy or don’t want to, I’ve been having really bad migraines and can’t look at my screen. I’ve had migraines as long as I can remember, I even got a hysterectomy bc they were (mostly hormonal) and so bad and would me on the couch and in bed for a week at a time on a regular basis. I guess what I under estimated was how much of the migraines were coming from the nerve pain from my work injury.
I do everything I can for them in terms of help. I see a neurologist, I take medication, I drink lots of water, sleep, stay away from trigger foods/drinks. When it come to medication I’m limited bc I’ve had a stroke and blood clot in my brain so majority of migraine medications I can’t take. I often end up at the hospital for a migraine cocktail and that works but can only afford that so much so I suffer at home.
My question is, has anybody found any homeopathic things that work but don’t induce migraine in the beginning? I did try whatever it is where they put the needles all over you and maybe I had a bad few experiences with it or someone who didn’t know what they were doing but I got really bad migraines from that too. I’ve also spent thousands of dollars on massages (no more money for that) bc my muscles are so tight and constantly locked up from my injury and just when they finally were to the point of loosening me up (after 2 years of going 3 times a week) I ran out of money. My boyfriend is constantly arguing with me to get away from western medicine and try something more natural but I just don’t trust it.
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LITERALLY homeopathic: Belladonna is the main homeopathic remedy. I gave it to a friend who had migraines years ago and he said that it stopped the migraine where it was, so it didn’t get worse, but didn’t prevent them. As he had decent health insurance at the time, he preferred to take medication instead. Formulas will have other remedies for other specific symptoms, but will be a lower potency dilution. Which is probably OK. Most homeopathic remedies are in milk sugar, if that is an issue. Anything “natural” but not homeopathic is probably out because of potential interactions, pretty much all herbs are blood-thinners. Magnesium might help, I’ve been told that Magtein is particularly good for migraines because it crosses the blood-brain barrier (but a lady told me her migraines got worse on it). Magnesium in general should help a lot with muscle tightness, maybe try mag glycinate because you can take more of it before you get loose stool.
@mossygreen i second the advice on magnesium for muscle tightness. Magnesium cream works almost instantly for cramps.
@mossygreen
I Don’t know anything about belladonna except that it’s a deadly plant. Do you just take it in capsule form?
@Star2236 Homeopathic remedies are made potent by being diluted and shaken until they have no measurable amount of the original substance (they’re essentially energy medicine). They usually come in tablets or pellets made with lactose that you dissolve under your tongue. Sometimes you can find a liquid.
@mossygreen @Star2236 I mean you basically just described a placebo… Never mind more potent by being diluted… I was going to let it slide but seriously?
@mossygreen @Star2236 @unksol Credible research on homeopathic “medicines” finds that most are just water as their is nothing else in it (eg it is supposed to be diluted and gets diluted so much anything that is supposed to be “active” is diluted out). The few that had anything in them it was just a few molecules out of the zillions of water molecules.
@Star2236 @unksol “Basically,” yes. Definitely? Yes. @Kidsandliz This is a slightly old but interesting interview about studying placebos as placebos:
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/6/1/15711814/open-label-placebo-kaptchuk
@Kidsandliz @mossygreen @Star2236 @unksol
yeah, the whole idea of homeopathics is really counterintuitive. I have had some experience with people using them with great success.
Is it a placebo effect?? Who knows.
Do they say they have gotten relief from them? Definitely…
Will they hurt you? Probably not, as long as you are not substituting them for drugs that are live saving such as antiarrhythmics etc.
The mind is pretty good at enabling you to overcome pain if you find the right ‘solution’
@chienfou @Kidsandliz @mossygreen @unksol
It’s my boyfriend really the one that’s pushing it. His parents are a big believer in this homeopathic dr. I saw him once just to shut my boyfriend up and could not believe what he was asking. He wanted me to get off all my medication for a month and then come back and see him bc he believed that medication was the cause for my problems. That dr is gonna kill somebody someday having people do that. There are some medications you just don’t mess around with not to mention stopping some suddenly can cause other problems.
@chienfou @mossygreen @Star2236 @unksol Good grief!!! That is really irresponsible of that person! That alone, never mind that it is homeopathy, would be enough for me to run.
@chienfou @Kidsandliz @mossygreen @unksol
I did and never returned.
@chienfou @Kidsandliz @mossygreen @Star2236 @unksol Yeah don’t go back there, yikes.
Get some locally-produced honey. Good vs. seasonal allergies. I have occasional migraines, and seasonal allergies are the main trigger.
@PocketBrain
I’ve been doing that for years for my allergies and it taste good in my smoothies
I have some magnesium cream that I use on my legs for cramps I don’t know why I never thought to use it else where.
@Star2236 I have never heard of magnesium cream, but I get bad cramps in several places and will check it out. Thanks!
@Star2236 @ThunderChicken
so does SHMBO… Google here I come…
If you want to read about “natural” and “alternative” (called integrative medicine if things are used that have some scientific evidence to support their use) and the clinical trials and other research done about their effectiveness (some found no effect, some found some effect), the Mayo Clinic has the most comprehensive database of this stuff.
As a cancer patient I see lots of people using things that don’t work or are actually dangerous so just be very, very careful if you choose to use anything that can be deadly. For example some who are anti chemo choose to eat apricot pits. As many as 20+ a day. Yes it will beat back cancer but this is because it prevents oxygen to get to/be used by cells - all cells (brain, lung, heart… all of them) not just cancer cells.
This article (pretty basic though) suggests how to evaluate taking things that have not been FDA approved.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/complementary-alternative-medicine/in-depth/alternative-medicine/art-20046087
This is the database (and clearly not everything has been studied yet). Any study included has to have been well designed (which is true of any study - if it is well designed then the odds of believable findings are higher).
https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements
@Kidsandliz I shouldn’t find the apricot pit crowd as funny as I do, but there’s so much overlap with the apple juice has arsenic, it must be because of pesticides crowd. But I guess I support the right of people to slowly poison themselves in their spare time in the privacy of their own homes. As long as they understand that’s what they’re doing.
@mossygreen The problem is when they talk other people into believing that this is a good thing to do and so many cancer patients are desperate and latch onto anything that someone else says works (never mind if it is dangerous, etc. - we need to teach more about practical applications of science in K-12!!!).
@Kidsandliz
Thanks for the information. My dad had throat cancer and it changed the quality of his life for the worse in many ways but he still lives to this day. Hopefully you have better luck.
@Kidsandliz @Star2236
see also Laetrile
@chienfou @Star2236 The list is way longer than that - at least on the cancer lists I am on. Scary.
@mossygreen - the problem is many don’t understand what they are doing. They believe testimonials, they believe what others tell them, they think all science is owned by big pharma therefore not believable because, well pharma $$$ (followed by oncologists make so much money from giving chemo they won’t even consider non chemo “treatments”) and so no incentive to find “THE cure” (yeah right - there never will be one cure that will cure all cancers)… How how people can be so stupid is beyond me.
@chienfou @Kidsandliz @mossygreen
I believe that too. They make to much money trying to cure people from cancer that even if someone did find a cure the companies would just buy them out. It’s very sad.
@chienfou @mossygreen @Star2236
That’s not true. Here is how drug development works:
While pharma research and development departments develop a number of drugs only about 10% make it to clinical trials and only about 3-5% actually get FDA approval and around 1% are block busters. May of the drugs approved are for what are considered “orphaned” diseases where there are relatively few people diagnosed a year. They rarely do more than break even on those. The cost to get to that point is very expensive. The year before last there was a late stage 3 clinical trial failure. That cost to the pharma was about 1.2B dollars. Yes billion. Because of that failure they didn’t donate a bunch of money to the different non-profits out there that then award money to cancer patients to help them pay bills, co-pays, insurance premiums, etc. because they no longer had that money to do so with a loss that big.
There are many start ups that have found/developed something promising. They get venture capital funding. At the point that something is ready for clinical trials the companies are sold t pharma. Why? Because it is extremely expensive and requires good infrastructure to even conduct a clinical trial. These small start-ups don’t have that kind of money or that kind of infrastructure and can’t co can’t afford to do that. The employees of that small start up then work for the pharma. Of course some of those drugs eventually don’t get FDA approval either.
Another group that develops drugs is academics. They often do it on grants, some from the government and some from pharma. A pharma then licenses it, uses their infrastructure and money to run the clinical trial. The money from licensing it gets channeled back into the university (a few universities share that with the researchers, some do not - generally if you develop something using university facilities, time, money, supplies, etc. the university owns your discoveries).
While buying promising start ups saves some research and development money, the problem is what people develop and what is needed doesn’t always overlap very well. As a result they can’t completely outsource research and development.This is a very expensive industry to be in with staggering losses when a drug fails late in the game, it is expensive to develop all those drugs that never even make it to clinical trials. Typically it is about 10 years from idea to FDA approval.
So yes it is true that if someone develops something that cures any disease or eases symptoms or whatever, the likelihood of pharma buying it would be high simply because the developer doesn’t have the resources or infrastructure to even do the clinical trials required to show effectiveness and reasonable balance between safety and benefit. The developer doesn’t get left out in the cold though. They get money for their development (whatever is negotiated when pharma buys it) and, if they choose, continue to work on that drug while then a pharma employee.
I don’t get migraines any more, but when I did, the thing that worked the best didn’t involve medication. I would run my car until it was hot, then park it and put my head against the steering wheel, directing the hot air from the vents toward my neck and ideally, down my back. In a few minutes, the migraine was gone. I thought I was a freak, until I found a coworker that did the same thing, though he said it took him about 45 minutes. Yikes.
YMMV literally.
(To be fair, I generally did this when I got home from work or had to travel somewhere anyway.) I tried other heat sources (showers, hot water bottles, bead-filled bags, etc.) but nothing worked as well as hot air. Maybe a quiet-ish hair dryer or other hot air source would work. Good luck - migraines suck. I’d blame the goat, but…
@mehcuda67 I use one of those microwavable heating pads that is infused with lavender. Heat it up for about three minutes, then place it around my neck/base of my skull as I lay down and shut my eyes. If I am awake when the pad cools off I place it over my eyes the warmth and weight help.
@mehcuda67 Wow, what a remedy that was! Who cares, as long as it worked though. Thank goodness you’re no longer getting migraines, mine also just stopped out of nowhere! We’re the lucky ones, FOR SURE!
@mehcuda67
My life is the heating pad on the hottest setting. If I had a party it would be a heating pad party bc of how much I’m on it. I actually had one that got super, super hot (which was awesome bc of my nerves that don’t work) but it actually burned my back. My mom would make fun of me bc it looked like a Cheetah across my back. It’s a lot better now and you can’t see it much anymore.
HIKING! VIKINGS! STRIKE KING [BRAND FISHING LURES]! AWESOME!
@mehcuda67 I get headaches I think might be migraines, and I do something sort of like that: run hot water in the sink and then drop my face into it. It doesn’t cure it, but it provides relief for as long as I’ve got my head down in the water.
So far Excedrin reliably fixes it enough for me to use computers (work), and other OTC stuff doesn’t. Someday I’ll see a doctor about it.
I’ve had migraines since I was 8. Now, at 53 I find the following helpful:
*8. No weapons. No matter what, don’t try to kill yourself. You won’t have the strength to be successful. Just pray. It’ll be over soon enough (or at least within a few weeks).
@AuntMean67
From another migraine sufferer, I love your advice! Especially #8, definitely stay away from the weapons!!
@AuntMean67
I just bought those weather x ear plugs. I looked at them for years but was always very skeptical. Do you use the app that goes with it? I never feel the pressure change but do notice when it snows, rains heavy or is very humid for days on end I will get a migraine. One of the first things I do is look at the weather and barometer when I feel a migraine coming but unfortunately I still get hormonal one and I’m just a migraine person so it’s not always the barometer.
@Star2236 I’m hormonal still, too. No end in sight according to doc.
I do use the weather x app. I set the threshold to lowest because I have my biggest problems when we have a lower then higher or vice versa pressure change. It alerts me an hour before it hits. You can put a sleep mode in if you don’t want disturbed while you sleep or if you have a period of the day that you can’t get notifications. It will alert you. But it only alerts you for the area where you enter. If you go somewhere else, like visiting out of town you’d need to set that place for alerts. Due to using the app and earplugs together, I experience maybe 1/3 of the headaches I used to get and the severity has gone down by at least that much too.
@AuntMean67
Thanks, I’ll have to download the app.
@AuntMean67 @Star2236 I get walking migraines with weather/barometric changes consistently…I get them for other reasons too but I literally check the weather first thing if headaches start…I had no idea about weather x ear plugs…I need to look into that…thanks for the info…also many years ago when the migraines were consistently worse a doctor had put me on topomax daily to help get headaches under control…I took it for a few years and it definitely helped…just my 2 cents worth of experience…I’ve never been so bad that I need to visit a hospital though…the really bad ones were so far and few between that I never had anyone around and was in too much pain to move or get help anyway
@amehzinggrace @AuntMean67
Yeah I’ve been taking Topamax for as long as I can remember it does help
@amehzinggrace @Star2236 I went on Topamax for a while but my liver enzymes skyrocketed so my Neurologist took me off of it.
@amehzinggrace @Star2236 I actually did go to the hospital for them several times. The last time was when I was on day 11 of a severe one and just a zombie. I went to work and when I left that day I was in so much pain I didn’t see a truck pull out and got hit. Didn’t even realize I was lying on the ground because I couldn’t feel anything but migraine. Ended up in ER but other than the bruising from the accident they couldn’t find any reason for the migraine. Funny though, the next day I came to work they showed me the security camera footage of me flying through the air when I was hit. And told me never to come to work again with a migraine or I’d be fired. that sucked.
@amehzinggrace @AuntMean67
Wow your really lucky.
@AuntMean67 oh god, glad you were ok. Migraines do hijack your entire brain
P.S. don’t feel like you have to post every day. Or at least not curated content. I got just past halfway through Dec. and then got time off, which means I had less time for this. Frankly, I should have just gone random once a day, shouting into the dark; it’s nice to have a platform.
Honestly, the Goat has no responsibilities but to absorb abuse. I tried to acknowledge or respond to all blames and unblames.
It can be fun, but if it becomes a burden, fuck it.
@PocketBrain
Haven’t even looked at the blames yet.
Cannabis works to stop my migraines very rapidly. CBD, which is legal everywhere, is effective too.
@OldCatLady
I go to a pain clinic for my work injuries and can’t get my pain meds if I test positive for THC.
Look up Daith piercings for migraines. Have several colleagues who swear by it.
@jeameh One of my friends got this but they said after about 6 months, it no longer helped. I’d love to hear your colleagues stories about it. If you want to give them my email, whisper to me.
Mine went away when I finally got my eyes checked and got a new prescription for my glasses
My nephew had debilitating migraines until he cut out all MSG
@llangley I’m assuming cutting out whatever processed foods the MSG was in is actually the culprit.
https://www.seattletimes.com/life/wellness/avoiding-msg-look-beyond-the-myths/
@llangley @RiotDemon
Hiyaah.
I assume from reading the bit about your medical history that prescription Botox is out of the question? It sucks that you have to deal with these. I can’t imagine the pain.
I’m late to this thread and have never even commented anything here before but I just had to…
Find a GOOD physical therapist who works with the whole body, not just rehabbing weak/injured areas. You mention nerve damage and muscle tightness… I have had such issues from an upper body injury 6 years ago, along with a 6 year old dislocated rib and elbow. I would get massive headaches from the tension in my neck, facial numbness, hand/arm numbness, chest pains and so much more. My naturopath sent me to a physical therapist who has done wonders to fix me.
He, not only put my rib/elbow back into place, but has relieved tension that chiropractic and massage has never been able to touch. I can’t fully explain it but he’ll find a tight spot and, if he can’t release it at that spot, he’ll know connected areas in the body that would cause tension. So… I had this spot in my neck that he couldn’t get and he put pressure on an area IN MY PELVIS and it relieved the tension in my neck almost instantly. The pressure in the pelvis relieved a tight pelvic spot which in turn was connected to the spot in my neck, if that makes sense.
Due to said injury, my whole left side (clavicle/rib cage/all that) was turned inward. Hard to describe but caused immense tightness/pain. After 3 appts with this guy, I’m almost functional again and have loosened up, with all my side effects of the injury either gone or severely diminished.
@aetilley
Naturopathy is a form of alternative medicine that employs an array of pseudoscientific practices based on vitalism and folk medicine, rather than evidence-based diagnoses & treatments.
I’m glad you found something to relieve your issues, but there’s probably a reason you can’t fully explain it.
@compunaut My physical therapist is “main stream” and employed by a hospital in another town and unrelated to said naturopath. I can’t fully explain it because it’s just a difficult process to explain. What he does is use his knowledge of the body to know what connects where and how to relieve it the tensions they may cause. He’s also uses movement of my own body to “work out kinks” so to speak.
Scientifically, all parts of our body work together. Basically, he relieved a problem area in my pelvis that was attached to the spot in my neck. He explained that the pelvic spot was attached like a rope and by relieving that muscle, it allowed the neck tension to ease up.
No need to be a downer just because you don’t agree with the method of how I got referred to this therapist.
@compunaut I’ll also add that if the “real science” hadn’t failed me so miserably for the 6 years I dealt with this issue, I may have never ended up at a naturopath. Since “real science” and multiple doctors/specialists never listened to my complaints or helped to treat me beyond one small portion of the original injury, I decided to stop bothering with them.
@aetilley @compunaut That they wouldn’t listen though is different than whether or not science based medicine had an answer.
Sending lots of hugs. Don’t stress about posting – we will be fine. Take care of yourself . I started on Aimovig injections very hesitantly and out of desperation, it’s been about 2 years now. It works better than anything I’ve ever tried. Almost down to 0 migraines now and when I do get one, Imitrex handles it. It was a surprise to me that I took it and that it works, because I’ve gotten really doubtful about the helpfulness of western doctors over the years and given a choice, I’ll take something natural over the alternative, especially when it’s something newly approved. At that time I was about to lose my job because of these dang things, so I decided to take a chance and it worked. (whisper me for my email if there is any way I can help, I wish I could help with some info about natural stuff, but I struck out with all the natural routes I tried over the years )