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Posts Tagged ‘Migraine brain’

My Brain Doesn’t Like My Life

March 17th, 2009

Now mind you, I like my life. Not that there aren’t parts of it I could do without. Not that it doesn’t have its difficulties. But I do like my life. It’s just my brain that doesn’t like it. Oh and maybe my immune system? Or my adrenal glands? What system is implicated in Chronic Fatigue? I know there’s some central nervous system component to that too, so I’m probably back to my original statement – my brain doesn’t like my life.

I was reading The Migraine Brain by Dr. Carolyn Bernstein the other day and I was really struck by one of her statements.  She is discussing the brain, how it is less adaptable and tolerant of change or variance than any other organ in the body, and Migraine brains are “as high-maintenance as they come!” Our brains want us to have a calm, quiet, regular existence, with low stress levels, the same amount of good quality sleep at the same time every day, a constant level of blood sugar.  I was trying to explain this to a business associate this morning – he was suggesting that I add a second weekly 7 a.m. networking meeting to my schedule, and I was trying to tell him the effect on my system of getting up even one day a week early enough to make a 7 a.m. meeting, when I don’t get up that early other days.

In reality, I have two teens who have to get up at 6 to get to school and who stay up late doing homework and I can’t always get to bed as early as I would like, or sleep as late as I would like, even though my husband takes care of most of both the early and late parenting duties. In reality there is a great deal of stress and financial pressure in my life, and I need to work, and I need to continually generate and reinvent the work that I do, since I work for myself. My stress levels mean that I don’t sleep as well as I might, and that leads to more fatigue, and more Migraines. More fatigue and more Migraines mean I get less work done, and that’s a vicious cycle.

Thinking about having a high maintenance brain has really amused me. I have never seen myself as a high maintenance kind of a woman! But I started speculating, if I have a high maintenance brain, what kind of life would it like me to have? Clearly it would involve going to bed by 11 each night. Maybe a bath and a massage to relax me before bed.  “Come along, Megan, time for your bath and massage.” Ah, yes.  Then I would sleep until 8 and have a nutritious breakfast in bed.  Get up and do yoga, and go for a walk.

The weather would be breezy, 75 degrees, mixed sun and clouds.  It could rain a little overnight, but never when I want to go out. Yes, I mean every day. I know it’s unreasonable, but I’m high maintenance, right? Come on!

I’m really not sure what the rest of my day would consist of, frankly it’s hard for me to imagine, but I do know that I would not have much of anything to worry about. That is non-negotiable to my brain! I could take nice little trips as long as all the other drivers drove safely and carefully and did not use their horns. I could have lovely visits with people and enjoy restaurants and movies and concerts and plays as long as no one smoked, no one shouted, there were no flashing lights, and the decibels were at a reasonable level. Whatever that is!  And no two people can ever speak to me at at the same time. And all my meals must be delicious and gluten free and arrive before my blood sugar drops too low.  Preferably without me having to think about it too much, or cook it.  Yes, I could have lots of lovely fun as long as it was all on my terms and I was home in time for my bath and massage and bed by 11.

Gee, it sounds kind of like what my high-maintenance brain wants is a permanent vacation! An expensive one! Oh for heaven’s sake, brain, get a life!

– Megan

Oh well, at least there’s chocolate.

Tags: Carolyn Bernstein M.D., Migraine brain
Posted in Rant, Silliness | Comments (4)

It’s all in your head

January 19th, 2008

Gotta rant today. I’ve been hearing too much about blaming the victims lately. And when we start down the road of “it’s all in our heads”there’s danger ahead.

What migraineur has not heard that as a put down? “It’s all in your head!”  What people mean by that is, it’s psychosomatic, or it’s psychological, or snap out of it – you can control this.  Migraines are in our heads – and in other parts of our bodies as well. They are a series of rapid firings of a bunch of overexcited neurons – in our brains, which happen to be in our heads, not our elbows or our spleens. So what? Just because something is taking place inside our head, doesn’t mean we have control over it. Try snapping out of it! Try snapping out of depression, or anxiety, or worse yet seizures, or a stroke. Try not thinking of an elephant while you’re at it. We can’t even do that!

Is that a statement straight out of the mind/body fallacy or what? The brain is a bodily organ.  It controls the rest of the body, to a large extent, but that doesn’t mean it’s not part of the body. Just because we use it to think thoughts, doesn’t mean we can control its processes or malfunctions. We like to think we are completely independent in producing thoughts, but our thoughts are strongly influenced, if not controlled, by our emotions, and emotions are produced by biochemical secretions. You can’t think your way out of an illness. Or maybe you can, who knows, but I can’t, I’ve tried!

On the other hand, our bodies influence our brains. We put chemical substances in – foods, nutritional supplements, medications, that help or hinder our recovery, relieve or trigger our migraines. We walk and exercise and that affects our moods and our thoughts.  And keeping a positive attitude, doing things to take care of ourselves, reaching out for support and helping others – all these things can influence our moods, and our health. They should be part of our migraine treatment plan. But they won’t take away the underlying condition. I cannot think or emote or eat or exercise my way to a redesign of my neurons.

This kind of thinking is particularly damaging when it feeds into our own perfectionism and guilt about being ill. The next person who says that, you might say, “I can’t think myself well, but you can think yourself tolerant!”  After all, their prejudices against migraine are all in their heads!

– Megan
Laying low with a headache – keeping migraine at bay

brain photo courtesy of Gaetan Lee

Tags: blaming the victim, Migraine brain, Migraine pain, psychosomatic illness, tolerance
Posted in Rant | Comments (6)

Our ancestress – a fable

January 10th, 2008

Back in prehistory, in hunter-gatherer days, imagine the dangers faced by a tribe of cave-dwellers. There were saber-tooth cats, cave bears, cave lions, cave-ins, earthquakes, floods, not to mention the dangers inherent in any group of humans living together in close quarters – the dangers of disagreement, of in-fighting and division, breaking the group apart. Such a tribe would need to work as a unit to survive, putting the good of the group above that of individuals, having a role for each group member to play.

Imagine, in such a society, the value of a highly sensitive individual. An individual whose nervous system was very finely tuned, perceptive of danger, aware of undercurrents. An individual who could function efficiently under high levels of stress, at least for a short time. Such an individual could serve as the tribe’s early warning system. Feeling the tremors first, perhaps, grabbing the children out of the way of the predator, warning tribal leaders of undercurrents of division among the group. Sometimes she saw visions, light and color, patterns and pictures only she could see. Imagine that such an individual would be highly valued, would have status, might even be a preferred mate and therefore be more likely to reproduce to hand down her sensitivity to later generations.

She was the one with the migraine brain. And when the crisis passed, her nervous system would let down not with a sigh, but with a crashing, pounding, nauseating headache. With blinding pain, light and sound sensitivity. What use was the migraine to the group, let alone the individual? None at all. Evolutionary traits often carry consequences – the useful sensitivity comes with a tendency to break down when tolerance limits are passed. Migraine is a side-effect of a highly sensitive nervous system. But while the migraine itself did not serve the group, the individual with the migraine brain did, and so we imagine she was cared for, not cast aside as disabled and weak, but nurtured through her crisis, as she had supported the tribe through its crisis.

We are her descendents, and our migraine brains are the same as hers was, all those millennia ago. We are highly sensitive, often artistic, intuitive, perceptive of others’ feelings. We generally function well under stress or in a crisis, to a point.  We handle a high degree of stress and go into hyper-drive, accomplishing great things, to a point. But our world is very different from that of our ancestress. We rarely face a saber-toothed cat or a danger of that magnitude. But we face a world of unremitting stimulation, information, noise, flashing light, increasing demands on our time, our brains, our emotions. We face a constant high level of stress. Human brains are not suited to cope with life in the 21^st century, especially not migraine brains.

– Megan Oltman

Making Rain out of Migraine

lightning image courtesy of Ian Boggs

Tags: evolution, migraine, Migraine brain, sensitive nervous system
Posted in Musings | Comments (5)