As a retired doctor, it drives me nuts to see other docs treat symptoms without going after the problems. They're short-changing their patients (
and, if you ask me, performing medical malpractice)!
Yes, identifying migraine-triggering substances takes investigation and effort. And yes, many patients simply want a pill to make it all go away, not wanting to put the effort into making lifestyle changes. But treating symptoms while ignoring the actual problem is dumb when you can identify and treat the problem 100% and permanently with a little extra effort.
To ID some of your personal triggers, a little basic allergen testing can help. While hardly perfect, these tests are better than nothing.
(1) get skin-tested for common allergens (
and know you may skin-react to things that aren't migraine triggers. For me, cats were a true-positive, while peaches were a false-positive.).
(2) get blood-tested for common allergens (
false positives and false negatives both occur with these tests, but still, you may find your results helpful)
If you have have day-in and day-out head pain, know that this screams
environmental triggers, and the most common ones are:
dust/dustmites,
mold/mildew (frequently linked to ME/CFS)
pet dander and
fragrances.
My recommendations (
not one at a time - do them all!):
(1) Immediately put dustmite/bedbug covers on all of your pillows and your mattress. You can find these online or at any large store. My favorite covers are made by Allerease:
https://www.amazon.com/AllerEase-Wa...ite+&+bed+bug+bed+cover&qid=1631558007&sr=8-6
(2) Replace your old sheets with hotel-quality 600-count cotton sheets (no flannel sheets - mites love them!)
(3) Wash all curtains in hot water and unscented detergent.
(4) Replace all thick, fluffy blankets with a thin cotton 'grandma's quilt'-type non-woven blankets (
or much better yet, an extra sheet if it keeps you warm enough). Don't trust "hypoallergenic" blankets to really be hypoallergenic. They often are treated with chemicals to deter mites, but that's not enough. And don't use terry cloth items near where you sleep (
mites love terry cloth).
--> If steps 1-4 help your head feel better and your sleep improves, you've pretty much self-diagnosed a dustmite sensitivity. Pulling up any carpeting in your home (at least in your bedroom) will help further.
(5) Remove all scented products from your home. No scented detergents, plug-ins, cleaners, lotions...just put them away for awhile and use unscented versions instead.
(6) Send your pets to a groomer for a good clipping and shampoo (unscented, of course), and then set up new sleeping quarters for them outside of your bedroom.
(7) Treat yourself and your home to a thorough professional cleaning (with unscented products, of course). Ask the professionals to look for any signs of mold or mildew and point them out!
If you get sticker shock at the price, just think of this as your clean slate, your jump-off to a migraine-free life. Maintaining a clean house is easier after the pro's do their thing.
(8) Invest in a good HEPA filter and keep it by your bed (
no ozone filters which are highly toxic!)
The good news is: you will probably feel A LOT better doing all of the above, so it's well worth the effort!
Now (
lucky you) it's time to eliminate all processed foods from your diet for a month. Doing this will eliminate many excess starches (
one of my worse triggers, personally) and many migraine-inducing preservatives, and it will help you to journal what you're ingesting, so more triggers can be identified.
Keep in mind that migraine triggers can have an additive effect on each other. For example, you may be able to tolerate a few sips of wine now and then, but add a few sips of wine to exposure to a friend's perfume and her dusty apartment, and you're sky-diving over your migraine threshold into a week of bass-drum-pounding migraines.
Trigger-hunting is one of the best examples of a patient advocating for his/herself. No doctor is going to do this for us. We need to do it for ourselves. Before I did this, I lost 3+ days out of every week for several years to migraines. Now the only migraines I get stem from neck position issues, and they're a day or two out of every month, only. WELL WORTH THE EFFORT!
P.S. If you want to know all the triggers on my list, check out my intro post.
Good luck trigger hunting! If I can be of any help, just shout.
