Treato

I hadn't heard of Treato.com until I received an email from them through this blog. I checked it out and it's pretty neat! If you want to find out what people are saying about certain medications or conditions (like migraines), do a search and the results are posts from forums all over the internet. You can even combine the two; I searched "5-HTP migraines" and found that I'm not the only person trying out 5-HTP for migraines, and I was able to read through what other people have been writing about in web forums.

Treato has more than 1,000,000 posts on headaches and 326,000 posts on migraines. I hope this will be a helpful resource for you. (Oh and the intro video's cute too!)

Happy Halloween!!! :)

Study proves exercise helps migraines

I'm sitting in class but I came across this article and had to share it. Very exciting! :)

Exercise Is Just As Good As Meds at Preventing Migraines

Update: Please read the comments to this post for some links to blog posts that go more in depth on this story. This study has a lot of shortcomings and should not be considered an official scientific study.

Fall Break

For fall break, my husband and I took a long weekend trip to the NC & VA mountains. We biked the Virginia Creeper Trail, which is 34 miles but the first 17 miles are mostly downhill. As luck would have it, I had a migraine the morning of our ride, but 2 Butalbitals helped and luckily my pain pretty much went away before the hard part of the trail. The trail was also fairly smooth so that helped. Near the end, my costochondritis started acting up, so I had to go slower. The entire ride took around five hours, and that included stops for pictures and lunch. Speaking of pictures...

Farm along the trail. The leaves were starting to change!

Thank God for Butalbital & sunglasses

Got up for sunrise (then slept until 11:30 a.m. - hey, it's vacation)

I was hoping I'd have a headache-free vacation, especially since midterms are starting up and things are going to get hectic again. But I can't complain, because the drugs worked and the break from the city was exactly what I needed!

No Botox (yet)

Injection image by TschiAe; modified by War on Headaches

Well, I assumed correctly. I called my insurance and they do cover Botox, only after I meet my deductible, and only 80% of the cost. I have a $1,000 deductible, so needless to say I will not be getting Botox injections anytime soon. I was really looking forward to trying it...at least as much as you can look forward to multiple shots in the head.

Now I'm only doing the following for my headaches:

• 5-HTP (no change yet)
• Mouth guard at night for TMJ (might as well not be on the list since it hasn't helped my head)
• Exercise
• Gatorade once a day - update: I'm down to the bottom of my Costco-size container of powder, so I don't think my electrolyte levels have an impact on my headaches
• Therapy about once a month 
• Drugs as needed: Aleve, Butalbital, Ketorolac
• Ice pack as needed

The list looks long, but basically I feel like I'm doing nothing, and I'm running out of ideas (that I can afford or attain legally). It's so frustrating. At the same time though, I'm still optimistic that things will get better, and I'm thankful that I've been able to drag myself to class, work and church even with the pain. Surely this headache thing will end some day, right?