Acupuncture Update

I've had four acupuncture visits so far; one per week. Unfortunately I'm still having headaches almost every day. I had a total of 26 headaches in June. A friend told me today that she saw a Duke study on acupuncture and headaches, and it took about 12 sessions for improvement, so I've decided to give it that many. Here's an article on acupuncture - it explains how it works, which I wonder each time I go! Thanks to @ManageMigraines on Twitter for the link.

In addition to the community acupuncture, I've been doing what I guess is acupressure where I tilt my head to the side and use that side's hand to push on the opposite side's area between my neck and shoulders, if that makes sense. When I push it, the pain radiates to my head. I'm supposed to push it until the knot that's there breaks up.


Also, as you can see from the picture, I'm on lots of fun non-big-pharma pills. So in addition to the Lyrica and Lexapro that my neuro put me on and I'm going to get off as soon as I see her next, I take the following: women's multi-vitamin, iron (not headache-related), magnesium, fish oil/omega-3, vitamin B complex, Chinese herbal migraine pills which are the black beads in the picture (10 twice a day) and 800 mg Ibuprofen or 2 Aleves when I have bad headaches.

My gluten-free diet is going very well. After eliminating food I couldn't eat from my kitchen, I printed gluten-free menus from restaurants that have them, printed a list of ingredients to avoid, and visited several different grocery stores to see their gluten-free foods selection. I'll blog more about it soon.

Hope all my American readers have a wonderful Independence Day, and I hope all my readers are headache-free for the weekend! :)