Flashing lights and a spinning ceiling, perfectly garnished with a pounding headache.
What many conceive as symptoms resulting from a boozy night on the tiles, forced to infirm in bed, nursing a painful headache for the day, is actually a medley of something more pervasive for many others – and a sizzling headache speckled with flashes of light, nausea, and dizziness aren’t the product of excessive merriment.
Migraines are one of the most common diseases worldwide & around ten million of us suffer from these brutal brain attacks on UK soil alone.
Perceived to be the precipice of modern life – intense days staring at screens, and living in a hyper chronic stress state, a sharp increase in migraine is evident in all four corners of the globe.
Many medications and treatments are available, but efficacy varies between individuals and side effects can be prohibitive (drowsiness isn’t conducive to a thriving career). Often, migraine sufferers find themselves popping pills on a trial-and-error basis, desperately trying to tailor pharmaceuticals to suit their physiological dispositions.
Trapped in a body with a brain that doesn’t want to function, and eyes who refuse to open is no easy feat. So, what exactly is happening in our brains when a migraine strikes and is there actually anything we can do to alleviate the troublingly paralysing pain?
When Migraine Hits
References to migraines date back to 400 CE, when Hippocrates, an Ancient Greek medical practitioner, wrote about them. This was just the first written record, so the pesky pounding might actually pre-date this.
Even though migraines seem to have plagued society for thousands of years, we’ve only just begun to understand why people get them.
Migraines are medically categorised as brain diseases. Typically characterised by a deep throbbing, they feel like very bad headaches, with a penetrating pain on one side of the head. While migraines can start at any age, it’s most common for someone to experience their first migraine episode during puberty, with a peak in activity at ages 35 – 45.
It’s still unclear to scientists what causes migraines, but research is pointing towards genetics as a key determining factor – as they often run in families.
Scientists believe migraines are the result of abnormal brain activity, affecting how our nerves send signals, ultimately influencing the production of chemicals, like serotonin, and how blood flows to the brain.
When a migraine hits, electrical activity in the brain changes. This affects blood flow to the brain, triggering a pain response. With the changes in electrical activity, excitable brain cells create waves of activity, triggering chemicals like serotonin to dilate blood vessels. This narrowing of blood vessels contributes to the pain response in the head.
Often misconstrued as bad headaches, migraines can be debilitating conditions with other symptoms – depending on the types of migraines you are experiencing.
Types of Migraines
Migraine without aura: no warning signs, bad headache. This also covers some rare types of migraine, such as hemiplegic migraine (with symptoms similar to a stroke), and migraine with brainstem aura.
Migraine with aura: warning signs, like seeing flashing lights, numbness or tingling, dizziness, etc, just before the headache starts.
Migraine aura without headache: aura symptoms but no headache.
Usually, migraines last between 2 hours and 3 days. Some symptoms may be persistent once the migraine has stopped. Equally, certain symptoms may be present several days before a migraine attack.
Over three quarters of people who experience migraines experience one a month. Some people have chronic migraines. This means they are persistent and experienced frequently over long periods of time – usually around eight per month sustained over a number of years. Chronic migraines are less common, affecting 2 in 100 people.
As well as the mind-numbing throbbing headache, other migraine symptoms include:
- Feeling very tired and yawning a lot.
- Craving certain foods or feeling thirsty.
- Changes in your mood.
- A stiff neck.
- Urinating more frequently.
Aura symptoms are a little different and can include dizziness, eyesight issues (like the flashing lights or wavy lines), numbness or tingling in the body or head (known as paraesthesia), and difficulty speaking. They usually act as warning signs, indicating a migraine attack is going to happen, but they can be present during the episode too.
Popping Pills & Slashing Screen-time
Understandably, if you suffer from migraines, your first instinct is to explore prescription medication. Desperately seeking a pain panacea, it’s possible to choose from a range of medications to soothe excruciating migraine symptoms.
Lifestyle changes might also support you in controlling the unflinching pain of migraine. It’s thought that the brain of someone with migraines responds well to routine and balance. So, hitting the hay and waking at the same time each day might be beneficial, as might a regular meal pattern.
Modern life largely revolves around machines that emit blue light, so addressing that might also be beneficial.
Screen time also means our eyes are constantly adapting to the behaviour of digital devices, so regular eye tests with an Optician are important for migraine sufferers.
Committing the cardinal sin of being glued to a laptop for eight hours a day won’t benefit your delicate brain – taking the advised minimum 5 minutes break for every hour worked is imperative for your eye health, posture and stress levels – all of which can contribute to headaches and influence migraine activity.
Alongside regular mealtimes, it’s also important to avoid overeating or under-eating, so you maintain stable blood sugar levels and balanced blood flow around all your organs. Addressing food triggers is also advisable, with authorities like The Migraine Trust recommending limiting caffeine and staying well hydrated throughout the day.
Alcohol is also a common cause of migraines, as it changes brain activity and increases dehydration, while decreasing blood flow to the brain.
Some foods might trigger migraines. Common catalysts include cheese and chocolate. It can be difficult to determine what’s setting off a migraine, as early symptoms of a migraine attack can be experienced days before the migraine itself.
Studies have found that people misconstrue triggers as premonitory or warning stages of a migraine attack. To make matters more complicated, during this stage you might crave certain foods, find yourself adverse to smells, or have increased sensitivity towards light and sound.
For example, you might crave sweet foods as a warning sign of an impending migraine attack. Then, you eat chocolate and experience a migraine shortly after. Naturally, this would lead you to conclude chocolate is a trigger for migraines, when craving it was actually a symptom.
Recognising warning signs can support you to understand the events leading up to your migraine attacks, helping you spot them sooner and treat them quickly.
The Female Frequency
Because we don’t already have enough to deal with, the universe has sardonically gifted menstruating people with oestrogen – a key culprit in triggering migraines.
This means people who naturally produce oestrogen – a female sex hormone – and have menstrual periods are more at risk of migraine attacks. Known as ‘cyclical migraines’ or ‘menstrual migraines’, accounting for around 50% of people identifying as female who suffer from migraines.
Research suggests that as oestrogen levels rise and fall along the cycle, contractions in blood vessels are triggered, creating another source of pain response.
Likewise, lower levels of oestrogen can make the nerves located in the face and scalp more sensitive to pain, invigorating pain pathways to the head and influencing migraines.
Menstrual migraines occurring exclusively at the start of a period are known as true menstrual migraines.
But most female-identifying migraine sufferers experience attacks at various stages of the menstrual cycle, known as ‘menstrual related’ migraines or ‘menstrual triggered’ migraines.
Unfortunately, menstrual migraines and menstrual related migraines differ from typical migraines. Similarly to regular migraines, they are typically unilateral, affecting only one side of the head. Unlike usual migraines, that pain can move between sides. They also typically last longer than regular migraines – not the best news if you experience a thorny head alongside other menstrual pains.
And to rub salt in the wound, menstrual migraines can be more problematic to treat than regular migraines. Capable of withstanding usual migraine medications, the pain can seem interminable, creating an even more distressing experience.
Your Yoga Prescription
Feeling like a futile battle, when it comes to migraines, a resolution for absolution can feel unattainable. But there is hope.
Whether you suffer from regular migraines or menstrual migraines, shining a light on your lifestyle may be the underestimated antidote to your pain.
Sleep, diet, exercise and stress management are integral to managing migraine symptoms and full-scale attacks. And there is one lifestyle system in particular that wraps up all these aspects: yoga.
Yoga is a philosophical system designed to prepare the body for meditation, through which ultimate enlightenment is achieved. Even though this sounds hippy-dippy, there are several important steps traditionally followed to achieve this state of bliss (known to yogis as samadhi).
Asana
The step that we’re most familiar with is the physical practice of yoga asana (postures). With a continuously evolving catalogue of yoga poses and styles to try (from hot yoga, to Ashtanga, Yin, and everything in between), the regular, steady exercise advisable to mitigate migraine risk is achievable.
By incorporating a variety of yoga postures and embracing various styles, you can build long-term, sustainable habits and hit your cardio, weight bearing, and mobility exercises needed for overall health. If that’s not convincing enough, yoga asana also promotes healthy circulation of blood throughout the body – imperative to keeping disease at bay (including migraines).
Pranayama
Yoga differs from other form of exercises because it profoundly relies on breath, known as prana. In the ancient yogic scriptures, prana was delineated as life force that flows through all existing entities, binding together everything in the universe. On a physical level, the distraction with conscious breathing increases your intake of oxygen.
By promoting healthy oxygen levels, we further fortify our circulatory health and provide essential nutrients to our brain cells. Our brains rely on oxygen to survive – it also acts as a relaxant in the body. So, we can reduce stress by doing something as inherent as breathing – just with a little more consciousness.
Meditation
Meditation is a practice designed to decreases stress and influences a calmer, more balanced attitude towards life – reducing functional stress responses to everyday stressors. Tension headaches are a common functional response to stress and may lead to the pathology associated with migraines.
Taking time to meditate at the end of your asana practice might feel uncomfortable and unproductive at first but it’s all about building habits. While the mind might seem futile to switch off at first, the more you meditate, the less busy your mind will be.
And remember, you don’t have to sit cross-legged on your yoga mat to meditate. The purpose of meditate is to still the mind and remove busy thoughts and noisy chatter, permitting it freedom from the stimulation of your external environment. This can be achieved in other ways – walking in a forest is a popular choice for many yogis.
Being in water, like the ocean, can deliver meditative qualities, or just sitting quietly stroking your pets. All contribute to stress management and managing migraines.
Nutrition
From the outside looking in, yoga might appear to glorify the body, pushing it to its elasticity limits and focusing on fitness. In fact, yoga views the body as a vessel for transporting a soul through a particular point in universal order. Yogic philosophy primarily celebrates the soul but applies importance to maintaining a healthy body to house that soul.
Yoga traditions foster a healthy approach to diet. Aligned with ayurvedic principles, which is the sister “life” science to yoga, it eliminates animal products, promoting nutrient rich foods fresh from mother earth. Naturally, this excludes foods that commonly trigger migraines, such as cheese and chocolate. And depending on your level of commitment to yoga, you may also influence abstaining from alcohol and caffeine, other offenders influencing migraines.
Movement For Mitigating Migraines
If you’re looking to incorporate the principles of yoga into your lifestyle, as a modality for mitigating migraines, it’s tempting to throw caution to the wind and hit the mat hard. But, like all ailments, migraines have contraindications and need a considered approach.
Because of the throbbing, pounding nature of migraines, it’s important to avoid any physical asana practices that risk over-stimulating circulation. Hot yoga, Vinyasa and Ashtanga are off the menu for migraines. To placate a pounding head, a slow, steady, restorative approach is key. Yin yoga is a natural choice for most migraine sufferers. Based on an ancient Chinese philosophy, Yin yoga is orchestrated around set postures that are gentle and restorative, held for 1 – 5 minutes at a time. Relaxing the deepest tissues of the body to achieve increased elasticity, Yin has a more meditative approach, making it the ideal approach if you want to continue practicing during a migraine attack.
My advice for the ultimate migraine mitigating experience is to turn off the lights, light a soothing lavender candle, dab on some eucalyptus essential oils and settle into a soothing yin practice.
Use bolsters, pillows, blankets and bricks and blocks to support your body and keep your head elevated above your chest with a soft pillow at all times.
But, in line with the philosophy of yoga, always listen to your body. If your head is so sore that even Yin isn’t tolerable, stop. Take time to rest and practice pranayama or meditate.
Honour your body & allow it to guide you in your approach.
Pushing through the pain is never a solution and only serves the ego, with a deleterious effect on your long-term health.
Outside of migraine episodes, yoga can support your body to destress and reduce anxiety, which may contribute to a reduction in migraine attacks overall. Lowering blood pressure and slowing the heart rate, yoga transitions us from the fight or flight state (in the sympathetic nervous state), nurturing us into our rest and digest state (parasympathetic state).
Giving our nervous system a well-deserved break, early research in 2014 concluded that yoga significantly improved frequency and intensity of headaches for migraine sufferers, largely due to the balance of these two nervous system states. In particular, a sequence of mobilisation techniques called Sukshama Vyayama is thought to benefit the reduction of migraine frequency and intensity.
Migraines are a disturbing experience to navigate. While there are many lifestyle changes to support treating them, it is a process and should be adopted as a permanent approach – not just a short-term cure all. Fostering the practices and principles of yoga contributes to a healthy, balanced lifestyle nurturing a fit and vital body, and a clear, steady mind. Coupled with medical support from your doctor, yoga is a powerful tool to soothe hearts, minds and souls who have found themselves faced with the exhaustive challenge of managing migraines.
Main – Photo by Zyanya BMO on Unsplash
