Migraine NEWS - latest research, on last page

I've often wondered if autoimmune issues are behind my Meniere's Disease and migraines. I could make a strong case for it, but sadly it wouldn't get me anywhere.

I hope you get more answers and an effective treatment.

EXCITING PAIN RESEARCH! Hot off the press!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-04/pain-relief-discovery-could-lead-to-more-effective-drugs/5570798 news item
http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1003688;jsessionid=F5E800FEEDE583C81947972B41C01510
actual paper

My hubby has suffered from migraines for years. Then he started taking large doses of Vit D and 5HTP and he's so much better. Google them. They are worth a try.

I've already trialled meds to increase melatonin and serotonin, which this combo apparently does; several of us on this thread have. The research I linked above is about chronic pain, not just migraine pain, and about how pain medication works. Vit D hasn't helped me yet, but then I apparently do have a problem processing it. (Many perimenopausal & post-menopausal women do, apparently)

Re the 5HTP, I'd personally be a bit worried, given my personal history:
"On the other hand, acute moderate gastrointestinal effects, such as diarrhea and vomiting, are common upon administration of 5-HTP, probably due to rapid formation of serotonin in the upper intestinal tract.[18][21][22]

Oral 5-HTP results in an increase in urinary 5-HIAA, a serotonin metabolite, indicating that 5-HTP is peripherally metabolized to serotonin, which is then metabolized. This might cause a false positive test in tests looking for carcinoid syndrome.[23]

Known drug interactions:
When combined with antidepressants of the MAOI or SSRI class, high dose 5-HTP can cause acute serotonin syndrome in rats.[24][25]

In humans 5-HTP has never been clinically associated with serotonin syndrome.

When combined with carbidopa (as a treatment for symptoms of Parkinson's disease), 5-HTP causes nausea and vomiting; however this can be alleviated via administration of granisetron.[26] As mentioned above under pharmacology, cases of scleroderma-like illness have been reported in patients using carbidopa and 5-HTP.[27]" (wikipedia, today)

But I'm glad it's working for your husband. There's nothing worse than persistent migraines that don't respond to anything.

FANTASTIC update on latest research and medical understanding on this neurological syndrome in the current issue of New Scientist, p. 38.
Overturns much of what most of us grew up hearing, and what our friends still say, about 'bad headaches' and about triggers. In fact, the info about triggers makes sense in light of what we now know chemically about how our brains work.
Also, very enlightening info about babies and young children.

Link?

Behind a pay wall online.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530110.700-not-just-a-headache-how-migraine-changes-your-brain.html

I have a .pdf! :-D
Sorry, we needed some time to scan it, and I thought some folks would have free access via the library.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xsa7gqrqdusn205/Your%20brain%20on%20migraine0001.pdf?dl=0

This takes you to a Dropbox; you don't need to sign in, just download. It will take a while.

I just read that article and found it reassuring and terrifying in almost equal measure. It's good to have a medical reason to blame for things like my hypersensitivity to visual stimuli, mood swings, inability to find words at times and failure to focus when there are a lot of external stimuli; but on the other hand, it's scary as hell to read that all the stuff I've been dealing with for the past five or six years could be the result of my brain changing, and the fact that my brain is not like other brains.

I hope all these findings result in something of practical use for migraineurs/euses.

Joanne, you do need to sign up for an account, although it's free of charge, to use Dropbox.

@joanne thank you!

Folks should note that articles in the "New Scientist" magazine are not peer-reviewed.
Make of that what you will.

re the Dropbox: I had no trouble downloading, although it's not mine. It's D's, and we have totally independent email accounts, that he sent the file from to me. So I'm sorry for any inconvenience: the file was much larger than either of us had anticipated when I originally thought I'd just scan and post it here.

Re the findings: yeah, Peggy, I totally agree. For ages I've been attributing most of my difficulties to the brain injury, not realising that they've probably been there all along and we hadn't realised or noticed. And the scariest part for me is that every migraine seems to be 'training' the brain to be better at handling the next one - we're super-efficient at handling pain and whatever other symptoms we have, so we learn quickly and then stick to the patterns. It's one thing to be a great learner, and have a 'plastic' brain; it's another to live with this...

And to read that so many colicky babies may be mini-migraineurs, that was sad.

kmk, the research is always attributed and you can track down the researchers. It's a leading science journal and has been for decades - it doesn't purport to be a research journal but is a digest of science news and interviews.

There will be correspondence discussing this article over the next few issues (in the Letters pages) and probably also a smaller article or two. It follows on a larger feature on how the brain works last month and also on how conscousness is formed and how our identity is shaped, where 'we' live in our bodies, and how we construct time both in our bodies and as something to measure objectecively - articles over the past 3 or 4 months.

This link takes you to the PubMed list of research articles linked to migraine research, a lot of which will back up the New Scientist article. However, many of the latest trends in that article haven't yet made it into PubMed lsitings that I can access, and this morning I don't have time to track the peer-reviewed research. We do have librarian-posters who may be able to help, though.

I will point out that a stack of this research has been known since at least 2003, and has been influencing the choices in medications and therapies our docs have been using. they haven't always told us why, and we have continued suffering, wondering what's happening. Now that the overall picture is becoming clearer, I understand why I keep getting drugs that affect electrical 'charge' in my brain even though epilepsy is not in the picture.

This UK research report on pain also appeared yesterday:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_151371.html

joanne said:

I will point out that a stack of this research has been known since at least 2003, and has been influencing the choices in medications and therapies our docs have been using. they haven't always told us why, and we have continued suffering, wondering what's happening. Now that the overall picture is becoming clearer, I understand why I keep getting drugs that affect electrical 'charge' in my brain even though epilepsy is not in the picture.

Also maybe why the only things that have ever worked for me were big doses of anti-seizure meds (2,000 mg Depakote a day now).

And thanks once again for posting these.

My sister (the bio-med librarian) has provided these handy links:
Article on another new treatment...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150301092136.htm

Great summary page for migraine news, with last item as the first snip:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/mind_brain/headaches/

Yes, the anti-seizure medications for migraines make total sense in this context. Also, anti-seizure meds are among the only things that make a real difference to people who suffer vertigo attacks as a result of Meniere's Disease. Is it a coincidence that I have both Meniere's and migraines?

There are so many correlations to be made between migraines and various neurological and immune system disorders. I hope scientific research makes more of all this in my lifetime... even if it doesn't help me directly, I'm now so interested in seeing what is really behind all this "stuff."

Can I say the new approach my sister happily showed me (the lidocaine delivered directly to the brain via nasal catheter) made me think of torture? I mean, I can't tolerate lidocaine well anyway, but really folks - a catheter up my nose is the best way you can devise support for chronic migraines, which are defined as more than 15 a month??

Do people actually stop to think what some of these 'treatments' entail for we sufferers? And our families?

Well, one advantage of waking in the dead of night, reeling with the increasing thumping pressure and head pressure that we all know so well is that you become aware of signs you only vaguely recognised before.....

It's not quite 4am. Pitch black. Woke 30 mins ago. Am now wearing migra-patch. For a long time, lay in bed bed watching constellations of single fireworks supernovas bloom and die in one particular spot in my field of vision... I've been aware, during the day, that my vision might blur a bit, and that sometimes I get 'running streaks' of light along the edges of my vision. But nothing like this. And each in almost the same spot, each obscuring my vision and each corresponding to a blur in daylight. The the storm was over.

Def reporting it to neuro.

OK this is getting scary - kids with migraine news. Have you seen this report??
Topiramate used to be known as a great way to not eat too much (not that it ever helped me that way).
Now comes this report:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_151941.html

Oops.

double oops!

I'm glad the story included THIS: "It's important to note that the report only showed an association between taking the drug and eating disorders; it did not prove the drug can actually cause an eating disorder."

It was the first thing that occurred to me when I read the headline. It's possible it's pure coincidence, although it's good to be aware of the potential and remain vigilant if you have a kid who has migraines.

On another front, I'm becoming more and more certain that I now have migraine-associated vertigo. Lately I've been getting horrible headaches every couple of days, or sometimes one that lasts for days on end, and often they come with the aura, pro-drome AND vertigo/nystagmus. It's beyond frustrating. Once we move, I'll have to line up some doctors very quickly and get back to a neurologist. Sad to say, I think I'm going to have to start taking medication on a regular basis, if I can't get this under control with diet and exercise.

I've typed this 3 times and keep losing it. Sorry if I'm terse and full of typos.

Peggy, things have changed over the past few years: if you need meds, your experience may not be what it previously was.

Also, I'll email you about my friend J and her vestibular migraines. She's unable to take meds without dire consequences, due to another medical condition. Recently she's been riding the Epley chair
http://www.gandelphilanthropy.org.au/2014/10/eye-ear-brings-balance-back-patients

Note, she did say that between the treatments she could barely function and wanted to die, and it took about 3days for her brain to retrain and settle after the third trip, but it was worth it. All three treatments were within a very short amount of time (2 or 3 weeks?).
http://youtu.be/cA3W35RlZYQ

Oh, holy crap. I had no idea THIS was what you meant by Epley treatments on my vestibular thread. I had no idea this thing existed, but I also have no idea how it could possibly help vestibular migraines. I will have to look into this some more.

The ENT guy said yep, vestibular migraines as well as the BPPV/vertigo we've previously been aware of. She laughed in his face... Apparently the spinning also stimulates the vagus nerve or something...
J's been using a walker on her bad days; slurring her speech like a drunk, senses overwhelmed. So they tried this round of treatments and I gather she's been better, actually enjoying quite a few social events over the past week.

In other exciting news, I now seem to be getting migraines while I sleep. Ah well.

That's very interesting. It totally reminds me of a giant gyroscope I once got into at a health and wellness show in NJ... you strapped in, standing up, held onto rails above your head, and used your weight to make it spin in just about any direction. I learned quickly how to make it flip over and over and over, head over heels, until the guy who was telling people how to use the thing told me I'd better stop before I vomited. Hard to believe now that I could do that at all without disastrous consequences, maybe 10 years ago.

I will look to see if any medical facility in CT has one of these. At the very least, it tells me that the practice affiliated with it is staying on the cutting edge of treatments!

New research article reported here:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_152088.html

It includes this handy list of symptoms that isn't what we're used to reading as 'migraine symptoms' but will all recognise:

You might have migraine if you experience two or more of the following symptoms:

• Moderate to severe head pain
• Throbbing head pain, often on one side of the head
• Head pain that lasts from four hours to several days
• Nausea or vomiting
• Headache that worsens with any physical activity or movement
• Sensitivity to light, sound and odors
• Difficulty concentrating and processing information due to the headache
• Head pain associated with dizziness or vertigo
• Headache severe enough to make you miss work or other activities
• Temporary vision or language problems, or tingling and numbness, in addition to headache

Other signs of migraine include: headaches triggered by factors such as stress, menstruation, altitude, weather changes and alcohol; and having someone in the family who has recurrent moderate-to-severe headaches.

"These are some of the characteristics of migraine that differentiate it from other types of headache, and if you have any one of these symptoms, you should strongly consider speaking with your health care provider about the possibility of migraine," Dodick said.