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Posts Tagged ‘serotonin’

The Complicated Relationship Between Migraines and Depression: Blog Carnival

October 16th, 2008

Diana Lee has brought us another great stack of reading with the October Headache and Migraine Disease Blog Carnival.  Generally speaking, a blog carnival is a
collection of links to a variety of a blogs on a central topic. The
Headache & Migraine Disease Blog Carnival has been created to
provide both headache patients and people who blog about headaches with
unique opportunities to share ideas on topics of particular interest
and importance to us.

Exploring the relationship between Migraines and depression, there are a number of thought provoking posts, some on this topic and some on others.  As if coping with the pain, nausea and disability wasn’t enough, depression and Migraine are co-morbid conditions, often occurring together.  When we have a Migraine attack, one of the effects is that serotonin levels are depleted.  So even for those of us who do not grapple with depression on an ongoing basis, bouts of depression around Migraine attacks are common.  I hope you go over to Somebody Heal Me and read some of these posts – and I hope they help you manage your own brain!

– Megan Oltman

Tags: depression, migraine, serotonin
Posted in Weblogs | Comments (0)

It’s Not Me, it’s the Migraine Talking

February 10th, 2008

I have been back on track with practicing my relaxation routine this past week and I was going to write you a nice inspiring post about that. I was on a 13 day migraine free run and feeling pretty good about it. Yesterday the beast sank its claws in again and hasn’t let go yet. I feel like all the inspiration has been sucked right out of me. But that’s just the migraine talking.

I resent the arrival of a migraine on the weekend, stealing my weekend time away. On the other had there’s less anxiety with a weekend migraine as I am not missing work – not missing things crucial to my livelihood. Just missing my down time, my marriage time, my family time, my fun time, my get the house in order time. Well, I guess I’m not missing down time, actually, because I am down!

Lying around. Watching tv, reading when I can stand the light, hanging out on line, drinking lots of cups of tea my sweetie brings, enjoying the comfort of my bed, receiving periodic visits from the family, with hugs and snippets of conversation. It’s not really all that bad, for down time.  That was me talking.

Then I can’t stand the inactivity any more. I decide to sit up and be okay, and I start folding laundry or some such ridiculously strenuous task. The pounding returns and the nausea starts back up. Danny comes in to watch a movie with me and we try to talk about plans for next weekend, and it strikes me what I am missing, how uncertain my life is. And I start to cry. Knowing that crying can make the migraine worse, I try to stop myself.  I remember how accepting I have been in the past month, and I start beating myself up for not being accepting right now. That’s the migraine talking!

Serotonin levels drop during migraine attack. I imagine the migraine slurping up my serotonin. So of course I’m going to feel unhappy. Aside from the pain itself, which is not happiness inducing, it’s hard to feel happy without serotonin. So I use what I can to comfort myself – hugs and tea and toast with honey, dark chocolate (when the stomach can stand it) and gentle movies, puzzles and pillows and good books. If I can concentrate at all, I come and write to you here, and that helps me remember who I am, that I am not the migraine, that it is what it is, that this too shall pass.

– Megan Oltman
Moderate migraine, day 2, hoping for relief soon

Oh, yes that’s Arizona again – Spider Woman Rock in Canyon de Chelly.  I didn’t have a migraine for that part.  Down below is New Mexico – the sunset over Albuquerque from Sandia Peak.

Tags: depression, relaxation practice, serotonin, weekend migraine
Posted in Communicating, Managing, Musings | Comments (2)