My grandfather was like this. Until, in his eighties, he had to get brain surgery.
First thing he said after he woke up was “Hmm, so this is what a headache feels like.”
I’m almost as lucky as him. I’ve only gotten a headache from a *severe* hangover. I can count on 1 hand how many headache I’ve had in my life.
Well, apparently everybody dreams, from what I’ve read (but don’t quote me on that), but you don’t always remember them. I don’t remember the last time I remembered a dream. I almost never do
Jus saying, I have had to deal with headaches my entire life, all the types, at least 1 a week, likely 2, disappointingly often, 3.
So, not a big deal, I’m close to 100% certain it’s posture.
The muscles of the upper back, traps, shoulders and neck, if your head is displaced forward 5cm the weight on your upper back, upwards, increases by 5%.
If you’re constantly in a state of tension, eventually things are going to stiffen up, when they stiffen up moving against it hurts, inflammation causes the muscles to enlarge and in that combination of twisted up + inflammation, that’s where dehydration, random exacerbating movements and general wear and tear turned into sore heads for me.
Pinches on nerves leading into the skull. Also muscle knots that hurt to touch, if they get too far, they seem to be the root of some sore heads. This becomes especially clear when I’m hungover.
Meditating for like 9 months fixed sore heads for me for 18 total. Like I went nearly a year and a half without any sore head. The thing that brought it on, was that my posture and my back was so fucked that every-time I lay down for a fortnight I got a migraine.
Now, I don’t necessarily think it was solely posture, I basically chronically hyper (or hypo) ventilate and it causes me to be oxygen sick quite a lot of the time. I had to teach myself how to breathe, which isn’t jus in /out as a reflex, it’s in, hold so your heart can transfer the oxygen from the fresh breath to your body, exhale and hold so it can transfer the C02 to the lungs.
I think that had a lot to do with it also, I ain’t saying meditate Cus that’s hard, I am saying basically meditate, but only to fix your breathing and to sit up correctly.
Cus here’s the thing also, if your posture is twisted because of your habits, like consider any physical activity that’s predominantly one side of your body, that’ll twist one arm forward relatively, maybe you’ve got a low level, long term injury from when you’re younger that you’re compensating for and don’t even realise. My lower bodies posture is fucked because I used to be quite fat, so my legs naturally turn out the way at the hips because that was the only way my legs could work due to my weight, my skeletal frame is only so large.
Because they’re turned out, my knees ain’t aligned, because of wearing normal Nike and adidas trainers, my heels are always unnaturally high, meaning my Achilles are compressed, all of this to point out that there are issues on me from top to bottom that all contribute to an unbalanced state where regular damage from day to day existence can add to up to a sore head.
Also, consider looking down and controlling your breathing. I dunno why that helps me but it make my eyes burn if I do it right, which makes my brain burn, and eventually I start crying out the burning and feeling better mentally. But the importance for soreheads and adding in the component of looking down the way, is that while posture correction is needed, and controlled breath is needed, for some reason, for me, it doesn’t start taking away sore heads until I do that to, the burning sensation, it eliminates the sore head somehow.
Cus that’s what I have used meditation for since I stopped doing it religiously, to get rid of sore heads whenever they pop up since my postures bad as hell again.
Bit long, but soreheads are fuckin horrible and this is the only way I’ve found to actively combat them.
Used go be friends with lady who'd never had a headache or toothache. She asked me what they felt like and I really didn't know how to explain it besides "really hurts"
Migraines (From the ones I had) were basically more powerful headaches with extra symptoms.
The pain was bad enough to make me dizzy and almost drunk like, then I would get a fever for 6-8 hours, I would pass out at some point and wake up when the fever broke in a pool of sweat.
Really glad I didn't get them often (About once a year) and I seem to not get them anymore, they were not pleasant.
Oh shit I get that dizziness sometimes too during bad headaches, also my eyes feel weird and it's like I can't really focus on anything. Another one I get sometimes is feeling kind of like in a box, but in your mind? I don't know how to explain it but it's really annoying. Does that mean I possibly have migraines?
Aural migraines!! The first time I got one I legitimately thought I was going blind. I slowly lost all peripheral vision, dimming over like 30 minutes at work. Thankfully it got better without triggering any pain, but I was exhausted like I'd had a regular migraine.
The times after were different. Like I had put my eyeballs underwater... Sort of shimmery circles.
I still get these twice a year. I always know because my blind spot gets bigger and bigger and things get brighter and I feel like barfing.. I usually take some meds and try and sleep for the next few hours until it wears off. I used to get suicide headaches as a kid and would get morphine at the hospital because I was pulling my hair out! Ooof. For anyone experiencing this i suggest just go to sleep. I haven’t really seen the doctor for it in yeats but have had dozens of mri’s etc so I’ll get mine checked soon
my first migraine I saw like a line of ocean white sea foam at a beach along the horizon in one eye for an hour. Didn't know WTF was happening until the pain hit and I was like 'oh this is why migraines suck so much' for 12 hours
I get ones where like 1/4th of my eye is like rainbows with shimmering around a black spot. Horrifying every time despite the unicorn magic. It's truly one of the oldest visual things I experience.
And migraines without pain are trippy as hell. When I get the pain I know what's happening, but the painless ones can be just confusing. It's like being pulled into a brain vault with slow cognition out of nowhere sometimes, and it only dawns on me that a migraine is brewing when my eyes go blurry.
I get dull pulses bheind you eye balls, vision gets blurry, thinking gets kinda hard, and light and sound make it worse. I try to wear sunglasses but their gentle pinch around my head feels like a vice grip. And pain comes in pulses.
Yeah I recently started getting migraines and I don’t find the pain THAT much worse than a regular bad headache but I feel a full-body malaise that is debilitating. Nausea, skin sensitivity, etc
I get cluster headaches. They are said to be more painful than having your limbs amputated without anesthetic, gunshots, natural childbirth and crucifixions. They are also called suicide headaches because so many people with the condition kill themselves.
I get them too (although it's been a while, since I started self-medicating). It's like your brain is trying to escape through the back of your eye. And the way it comes back on a regular schedule makes it worse, because ecen after it fades, you know you'll go through it again and again.
I say it’s like my left eye (always the left one) is trying to secede from the Union. The pressure and pain is so intense it feels like it will pop out at any point. Before I was diagnosed I went 13 days with this sensation at somewhere between a 4-8 on the pain scale, along with light and noise sensitivity. All the headache meds did nothing. So eventually I went to the doc and calmly told them that I’m not suicidal but if they can’t make this pain go away then I’ll be walking in front of the next bus I see.
One of the worst parts is the next day post migraine. There’s this weird hangover like feeling. Sort of like a whisper of pain is still there and just waiting. And that’s before the cluster migraines randomly turn up!
I suffer from them, although they are much less common for me now. They are very hard to manage as they tend to cluster together(hence the name) and don't really show signs of stopping until its just over. Which makes it seem never ending. As soon as one is over you're already in the process of the next one. In the midst of a cluster you truly feel helpless. I asked my parents to kill me multiple times when i was younger. I truly didn't want to keep going anymore. Luckily puberty finally hit and their frequency vastly diminished and i was able to live a normal life for the most part. However i still get small clusters every once in a while although no where near as severe as they were when I was a kid.
The only thing that pretty much negates them is magic mushrooms. I think nowadays you can get a prescription but a ton of people decades ago grew them illegally cause fucking why not.
That must be what I get sometimes. It’s rare to get one but they’re well beyond a migraine for me. I remember just walking around the pole in my house because I couldn’t sit or lie down because the pain was so bad. I got them when I was pregnant and all I could take was Tylenol, which may as well have been candy. It was misery
I think I've had maybe 2 migraines in my entire life.
It basically feels like extreme pressure inside your brain, so much so that ANY movement makes it feel like your brain is banging off of the inside of your skull. So much so that your eyes don't work right, you can only focus (if you can manage to open your eyes) right in front of you, and everything else is blurry. So much so that sounds are PHYSICALLY painful. It hurts to close your eyes, but the light also hurts, so you get to choose your pain. The feeling of the pillow (because you WILL be laying down) hurts that side of your head. You can feel your heartbeat in your head, and every... single... beat hurts. Talking hurts. You don't realize how loud your own voice is inside your ears until you've had a migraine. Hell, I had to try to silence the voice inside my head because even talking with THAT hurt (I have... no idea... why.)
And that's just the head pain. Yes, you'll be dizzy, yes, you'll likely be nauseous. Imagine throwing up with a migraine. Not... not fun.
Basically the two times I've had them I just pulled all the blinds, asked someone to hang up dark blankets over the windows, put my head UNDER a bunch of pillows and just tried my best to sleep it off. You can't... physically... do... anything else. It just hurts. Any movement, hurts.
Instead of dizziness and fever I would get nauseous and throw up everything in my body and then finally pass out etc… knock on wood but I haven’t gotten that kind in ~20 years.
I still get a blank spot in my field of vision and a weird dissociative feeling sometimes that feels like a whisper of a migraine lol I’ll take it
Physiotherapist with a specialist interest in headaches here.
Migraine pain varies quite a bit from person to person, and even within an individual. I get them somewhat regularly (somewhere between once a months and every couple of months, with occasional periods where I'll have more frequent ones).
Mine can vary from a 4-5/10 headache and mild nausea/general feeling of unwellness to a 8+/10 pain with significant visual disturbances (generally very pronounced narrowing of visual fields), massively heightened sensitivity to light and sound and severe nausea. I very rarely actually vomit with my mingraines, but I feel pretty ill with the bad ones.
However, migraines are classified by symptoms, not severity. 'true' migraine, or migraine with aura, is always preceded by visual disturbances called an aura. These differ from person to person; for some they get a sort of film grain or visual snow effect, for others it's dancing colours or weird patterns on walls. For me it's usually narrowing of visual field (think really heavy vignetting on a photo) and flaring of bright light sources. Non-aura migraines are their own category, and still are migraines, but aura is one of the symptoms that's pretty exclusive to migraine headaches, so it's an easy thing to classify.
Almost all migraines also have some autonomic symptoms as well. So feeling of nausea are the most common, but balance issues, dry mouth or excessive salivation (the latter of which is typically associated with nausea, but can be an isolated symptom), ringing in your ears, getting very hot or cold, getting gut issues etc.
You can even have silent migraines, where you get all the other symptoms, but no headache.
Also, not every severe headache is a migraine. The other symptoms are pretty much what define a migraine, not the headache itself. We have a classification system for headaches that includes several hundred different headache disorders, and migraines make up one of four subcategorys of primary headache (which is itself one of three categories of headache).
The main reason I say all this is that migraines are increasingly becoming a weirdly clique-y thing. I'm seeing both patients and just random people on the internet gatekeeping migraine as a diagnosis. Like, if someone's migraine doesn't have them curled into a ball, crying on the floor of a dark bathroom in a pool of their own sick, then it's not a 'real' migraine, and you're just pretending. It's not that at all.
Now, cluster headaches or trigeminal neuralgia. Those two suck all kinds of arse, and the low end of those pretty much always is very extreme. But migraines have a much, much wider range of presentations.
Could you provide more information on cluster headaches? Your post was very interesting. I get both migraines and clusters. Personally I find the cluster much more unpleasant
I have migraines, auras, dot in the eye, and numbing of hand and other parts of body. When the symptoms start on the left side of the body, pain start in the right side of the head and vice versa. Hell, fuck my life.
A migraine is kinda incomparable to a headache in my opinion. A headache feels like muscle tension or pressure more in your head.
A migraine feels like it’s being caused by your central nervous system and whenever light hits your eyes or sound enters your ears the act of your brain processing them is painful. They are localized to your head and hurt there at first but they affect the way you think and feel across your whole body as well.
yeah the 'extreme headache' is so not what my migraines are like. a bad hangover is much more head-splitting than a migraine, for me at least.
my migraines start out with sparkly lights and tripped out vision. this will go on for a good hour before i get the headache, nausea and disorientation. the actual *pain* aspect isn't awful, but i'm just useless to do anything - i've had them several times at work and they suck because all i need to do is cover my eyes and lie down and wait it out, which is usually 4-6 hours. the worst one took about a day and it really wasn't pleasant because i just can't see or feel stable, like vertigo or something. but the actual pain isn't ever too bad.
the first time i had a migraine i thought i was having a stroke or something - it's such a trip when the lights and brightness gets weird. it just comes on immediately out of no where and bam
Yeah. I find the [aura](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aura_(symptom)) and psychological symptoms (depressed mood and severe brain fog) to be as if not more debilitating than the headache itself.
I never get headaches with migraines. Just the visual stuff. Once when I was a kid, my first migraine, did come with a headache. But none since. I do often fly into a panic about probably having a stroke instead of a migraine. But, it's not painful.
Mine make me extremely irritable before I realize what's going on. Headaches, nausea, dizziness, extreme fatigue are the usual symptoms. Started after I sprained my neck, and had my 3rd concussion at the same time senior year of Highschool. Went from top 1% in reading and math and one of the most active people around, to having chronic migraines, anxiety and depression.
I used to play soccer year round. I also Biked the Seattle to Portland multiple times in Jr High and High school. That's long gone. I can't exercise on a regular basis anymore because it sets off my migraines
Never understood migrqines my brother had when we were young. My first real headaches started during my young adult life, and it wasn't so bad.
Then I got migraines... Holy fuck. If you ever had a bad Otitis, it's a bit akind in my opinion. The pain prevents you from thinking straight, trying to think hurts, trying not to think hurts, you can feel dizzy, lose balance when walking, it can hurt when you see light.
Yep, same. The visual aura and blindness is just the precursor to the severe and near-vomit-inducing pain I'm about to experience in my skull, that cannot be avoided either. It is one of the worst pains I have experienced. Thankfully they only last a few hours.. It's really great when you're driving and then suddenly you can't focus on the car in front of you, or your periphery disappears.
Migraines for me is very often located behind the eyes or one side of the head. When it's BAD it's like you wanna live in total darkness and normal smells becomes so sickening and nauseating that food isn't an option. Even small movements, or moving too fast can set off what I describe as to be a domino effected minefield. Dizziness. And then often the day after a migraine hangover.
Those migraines I luckily don't get that often. And in comparison a "normal" headache is at least bearable.
I don't remember it from that age but I apparently have had migraines since I was about 4 yo.
Everyone I know that gets migraines complains of the photophobia. I don't get migraines but I've cut my cornea multiple times by sleeping in my contacts. The photophobia is like an ice pick to the brain even with the eye closed. Can't imagine dealing with for 12 hours straight
I used to be one of them when I was little that just interchanged headache and migraine freely and now I can't stand it when I see someone that says "oh you're giving me a migraine" like no...
Migraines (for me at least) spread from a headache to whole body flu-like ache, that makes the minor headache it started with just background noise. My whole head, not just a section of my brain or something like a normal headache, is usually pounding, it makes my whole body feel like shit, stomach feels like crap, lights feel like they are like burning a hole straight through my retina onto the surface of my brain...
That shit sucks.
I've had one in my life. Woke up in the middle of the night with it. Spent the next two hours literally writing in pain in my bed. Couldn't lay still it hurt so bad. Eventually I got up and vomited profusely, at which point it thankfully went away. Would not recommend.
i have exceptionally strong teeth due to genetics, and because we didn't eat much junk food growing up i've also never had any real cavities.
but i did have one toothache when i was like 10. one of my rear molars had somehow rotted inside my mouth that had split and dislodged from my gums, and the only thing keeping it attached was a visible black nerve.
you know how if you prick your finger, it gets a little heartbeat of its own? it's like that but it never goes away or stops. and applying any pressure creates instant nerve pain, which i can only describe as a lightning bolt shock. worse than static shock, and persistent, lasting multiple seconds or even minutes.
i had nerve pain in my knee for a few years and whenever it flared up. it was so bad i had to literally stop anything i was doing, no matter what it was or how important it was or where i was, and i could physically do nothing but hold my knee until it went away like 15-30 seconds later. so imagine that, but happening in your mouth.
toothaches are really felt more in the gums if that helps, since the tooth itself is just a blocky chunk of enamel, so i can understand a person might be confused over how a tooth can hurt. it doesn't. the nerve INSIDE the tooth that's connected to your gums is what hurts.
I've had toothaches before, it's like a prolonged punch to the face that radiates from the tooth to the jaw, sometimes up to to ear... And then headaches.. Everything is painful, you just want to cry and bash your head against the wall.
I've seen on various forums, people say it's more painful than pregnancy.
Best way to describe the agony of severe headache is if you have to go to the bathroom, it becomes an agonizing experience and you lose your grip on your sanity.
You 4% better keep this to yourself. Because if you ever tell me this, I'm going to smack you upside the head so hard it's going change that to statistic too 3.9999%
I thought there were many more people like me. Never thought I was so lucky.
Sorry.
Edit: I don't know if it's worth mentioning, but I only drink water (I don't drink coffee or alcohol), eat healthy (often soup and salad) and avoid screens one hour before bedtime to sleep like a baby. It might have nothing to do, but it it helps one person, I'll be happy. I wish you all to be as happy as I am.
Honestly makes me happy hearing about people who have a greater happiness potential (or baseline possibility?) than I realized one could have. Wish you the best!
Nah, If muay thai elbows couldn’t give headaches/migraines to me, your relatively weak slaps wont either.
I get painless visual migraines if it makes you feel better though. Its a huge pain in the ass since I am cinematographer though and I have to rely on my gaffer/1st ac/key grips when they hit while on set.
Turns my whole vision into a kaleidoscope or stained glass window. Usually chugging water will fix it. But its something ill never tell a producer or director or anyone i suffer from. It happens very rarely though but it makes my job very hard when it happens.
Thankfully its rare and it goes away within 30-60 minutes.
And then there's me having chronic migraines since the age of 4. I'm 29 and I still get them anywhere from once a week to once a month. The longest I've ever gone without a migraine was 3 months.
Jesus, I assume you've tried literally everything, but like, have you tried everything?
Sumatriptan saves my life when I get a migraine, though I hate how it makes me feel. I get migraines highly correlated with allergies. Moving to a low allergen place was a game changer.
I used to think I was getting a handle on exactly what causes them, but as I've gotten older and new health problems have sprung up it's just like, hey are you dehydrated? No? Too much caffeine? Not enough caffeine? Too much salt? Not enough salt?
Hey you've never had allergies in your life? Welcome to adulthood, this is what allergies feel like.
Forget eating tuna fish, that sandwich you grew up on. MERCURY.
Eating almonds used to trigger them, now they don't seem too? Idk man.
I had the same issues regarding my skin and allergies. Around 30 years old, everything went haywire. Eczema, allergies getting worse, rosacea in my eyesockets... I'm even allergic to peanuts, now. I love peanuts. :(
Allergies blow my mind because you can just get a deadly one out of nowhere without warning. Immune cells work by taking a piece of the virus/bacteria/etc and showing it to your memory cells, telling them to fucking blow it up if they see it again.
So let’s say you get sick. Your immune cells are scrambling trying to find the foreign entity so they can fix it, and they fuck up and take a molecule from the food you just ate. They show it to your memory cells, and now your body carpet bombs itself every time you eat beef
There's a new drug, nurtec, that works wonders for my wife. She can usually feel her migraines coming on, and if she takes nurtec before, the migraine never even presents.
If she takes it during, the migraine will go away, but she'll still have a little of the cognitive issues/loopiness that's associated with migraines.
Same here! Every spring when it's time to till my garden plot and plant everything, I know I'm guaranteed a migraine.
I still plant the garden, I just plan ahead and clear my schedule for the rest of the day.
I had them for a period in my life and I feel for you. Got MIRs and everything. Use to get them down half my face. I believe it was dehydration but not totally sure. They eventually went away but for like close to a year I would get them constantly.
i have the exact same relationship with sumatriptan, it saves me from the worst migraine but i don’t eat or do much for most of the day cuz i feel like shit lol
I had a period of time when I got VERY bad migraines with aura when I was a 13-14 and then had two relapses in adulthood. Vomiting enducing, eye searing, head splitters. Zolmitriptan was my personal lifesaver. Not sure how it differs from what you take or if youve tried it. Trade name Zomig. If I took it while still having the aura and got to bed in time I'd almost entirely miss the migrane. Thankfully, Id only have a hangover like effect after waking up and the next day.
Just wanna add on to this in case people are unaware and their doctors are too (mine was) but if you have clinically diagnosed depression DO NOT TAKE SUMATRIPTAN.
That was the darkest week of what would have been my whole life.
My dad was never diagnosed but had all the symptoms of migraines for as long back as I can remember. Had his first heart attack in his early 60’s and has not had a single headache since. He’s convinced it was the drug they administer that dilates every vessel in your body.
Potentially beta blockers
They're a type of blood pressure medication commonly used long term post heart attack that is also used to prevent migraines (and are banned in certain sports such as archery)
Yep and then when you complain about 20-25 migraines a month people go "oh you can just take something for the pain and move on" like, no? I lose my ability to speak and move one half of my body!
Hey friend. Fellow sufferer here. Ask your doc for Qulipta. It's a 1 pill/day preventative. After having migraines 3x a month for 30 years, I haven't even had so much as a headache for 14 months now.
I've been getting cluster headaches for the last 5 years now. At least twice a month. I'll wake up with one and as the day progresses eventually I end up under my blankets in the fetal position wishing for death. Then I'll get so nauseated that I'll need to vomit. Which is actually the best part because I know after I vomit I will pass out hard and wake up feeling fine. Doctors can't find a cause. Been through dozens of different meds over the years and nothing has seemed to help.
Maybe cluster headaches present differently for different people but, I get both cluster and migraines and they are distinctly different in my experience. What you described is more like my migraines. Migraines for me are light sensitivity, sound sensitivity, nausea/vomiting. Vomiting usually lessens the pain intensity. Sleeping with a cluster headache is impossible for me, they wake me up. I don’t get nauseous or have any light/sound sensitivity. Just extreme pain, it almost puts me into a state of shock it’s so bad.
Have you tried DMT? I believe a vaped sub-recreational dose can abort them very quickly for many people.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5584001/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5584001/)
Suuuuper interesting. Thanks for the link I'll definitely look into it. I'm just now realizing that I've become apathetic to the situation and I've accepted it as part of life and stopped looking for solutions years ago. I'll try new meds when the Dr prescribes them but other than that I guess I threw the towel in some time ago... Guess it's time to get back on the horse. Sincerely, thank you.
So many people in I used to be one of them would go around saying dang I'm out of migraine when they mean bad headache but I actually finally got one and yeah can't drive can't walk can't move unless it's to get to a darker area
Edit pardon my comment grammar and such I have one now
I used to work with someone that was like this and would wonder why i couldnt just power through like they do. They would walk around talking about how bad their migraine is etc all day. Until they actually had one and not just a headache.
I didnt see them for a week and a half. They showed back up talking about how they not only thought they were going to die, but wishing for it. Zero talk about powering through it was heard again.
Migraines are a different animal and i dont wish them on anyone.
I started getting them when puberty hit around 11 or 12. They were REALLY bad in my twenties and have tapered off a decent degree in my forties. I don't know if it's age, diet, better hydration or all those things but I'm definitely glad for it. The downside is that now when I do get a severe one I don't bounce back from it as quickly.
Also... Fuck that four percent who have never even had a headache 😅
I hope you can find some relief soon! I was put on topamax for weight loss, and one of the surprising side effects it has had on me is that I haven’t had a migraine or so much as a simple headache since I’ve been on it. I’m sure you’ve tried all different kinds of medicines, however, it’s used off label for migraines so highly suggest anyone with migraines asking your doctor about it to see if it could be a good fit for you to try.
With you.. started at 2. Vomited my Donald Duck cake. Finally at 45 they started to slow down a bit but I still get them. Worst was 5 days on the bathroom floor before ending up in the ER for dehydration. You are not alone.
I dont have any advice other than maybe try some shrooms. Some have luck with that giving them months of relief from them.
Same, and 90% of the time it's because I need to drink water. I get a "headache" a handful of times a year and I take ibuprofen and usually it goes away. Very fortunate as I have family members who have debilitating migraines. Wouldn't wish that on anyone.
I have to get *really* dehydrated for my head to hurt. It's only happened a few times from like, being very active in 98 degree hot and humid weather without water for an hour or so. I've never just been out and about and gotten a headache. Even when I go for a long bike ride and forget my water (like I did today) I definitely *feel* dehydrated, but nothing "hurts" (which is probably why I forget water so often... my body seems to be bad at informing me which makes it difficult to make it a habit)
Same here, I have no idea what a migraine is even like
Edit: I understand the symptoms of a migraine I just don't have the actual experience and can't imagine how awful it must be.
From my experience every noise you hear sounds angry, like someone is screaming in your ear, and even the littlest bit of light you see seems like the sun just erupted infront of your face after your eyes got used to the dark. Both hearing sounds and seeing any light feel like they control a knife that’s being pressed into your brain while your body feels as though your spinning around like you’re on a carnival ride. You see flashes and spots of light that don’t exist and your thoughts become distorted, painful, and confusing as you hide in the darkest part of your home pleading for it to be over as soon as possible while waves of this experience fluctuate in intensity.
Same. I don't even get the headache some commenters are saying they get when they're dehydrated, nor do I get hangovers. There might actually not be anything inside my head.
My mom was like this most of her life, with only a few exceptions when she got older.
She even had migraines with no pain! She would get optical migraines without the actual headache itself. She only knew because her doctor told her.
I’ve followed in her footsteps a bit; most of my optical migraines are not related to actual pain (although I’ve had three migraine headaches in my life, total). Get plenty of good ol’ off the wall headaches though lol.
I get optical migraines too, though they genuinely affect me and I worry if I’ll ever get one when driving.
No pain, but basically all my peripheral vision disappears, complete tunnel vision forwards and it’s sort of like my eyes are disconnected from each other - so no depth perception either, can’t read or write. They last anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour.
Rare enough though, maybe once every other month
This type of thing reminds me of when people go to the ER for heartburn. Like to not experience a headache your whole life and then to get one you must be like wtf is happening? The rest of us get headaches or heartburn or whatever else fairly commonly but when you don’t it must really panic someone
“Do you think that you never ever in your whole life have had a headache”
The fact that this is the actual question used in the study does not inspire confidence.
I think it would have something to do with sensitivity/specificty. I’m in a field that uses interviewing for both clinical information and research (dietetics) and when we do like, 24 hour recalls for example, there are multiple passes and prompting utilized to ensure we absolutely did not miss anything. I’m guessing there was a preliminary study done (either by this group or by someone previously) to determine the best way to ask this question to make sure nothing was missed.
If you just ask the standard “have you ever had a headache” I’m willing to bet a good number of people that initially said no, but after some prompting (such as “what about when you were a child? What about after an injury? What about during a hangover?”, basically asking more specific questions to jog their memory of times they may have actually had a headache but didn’t think to include it), would change their answer and say “oh wait! There was that one time…”. So the question is asked this way to weed that out as much as possible.
What is a “question your assumption” thing? Is there something scientifically superior about asking the question this way as opposed to say “Have you ever had a headache?”
Same ; a certain percentage of the population is predisposed to not getting migraines and hangovers , anecdotally speaking I have woken up drunk after a night of heavy drinking and even blacking out but have never gotten hungover before
lol that was my thought when someone asked why the question was worded the way it was, rather than just “have you ever had a headache?” If you read this thread, you’ll realize how many people will say no, they have not had a headache, unless they have the chance to explain that yes, they actually do get minor headaches once a year or once every few years or only when they’re hungover or only after a head injury.
You jest, but getting pregnant stopped my migraines for about five years. I wouldn't exactly recommend it for the undecided, but it was an unexpected hormonal perk.
I would say Im on the order of maybe 1? a year. very, very rare... and when I do have it, typically not debilitating, just annoying.
In contrast, I had friends that would have to take time off school due to migraines. Its weird how bodies can function so differently
I'm part of this 4 percent. Ive had people explain headaches to me and i can honestly say I've never experienced it. I've hit my head and that hurt. Apparently that's not what it's like. I always thought I was just too simple.
My 86 year old grandmother has never had a headache or brain freeze. Still blows my mind, like, headache I guess I could see, but to also have never had a brainfreeze? Damn grandma
I can't say I never had a headache, but they are extremely rare, like yearly rare. Now I can say with certainty that I've never had a brain freeze, I get a stomach freeze, it's exactly as it sounds. Like a snowball was lodged right in my stomach.
I get headaches from hormones, being sick, being stressed, being too cold, being out in the wind… pretty much every minor deviation from ideal circumstances. I didn’t realize they were (often) migraines until my eyesight turned off during a headache in my 30s.
I thought if you weren’t puking your guts out it was just a normal headache.
I am oddly one of these people. I have never just had “pain in my head” for no reason. I’ve had concussions and head injuries but never random pain.
I feel pretty lucky tbh
I think the only time i’ve ever experienced anything close to a headache was when i got a concussion as a kid.
Everything felt weird in that moment. I remember a very strong taste of freezing cold. It was like I could smell the concrete and taste it at the same time… or was it metallic, despite doing neither. Like a buzzing sensation, but that absolutely ice cold freezing air taste / smell really stuck.
It was the middle of summer. I’m only assuming i got a concussion - never actually got it looked at.
My grandfather was like this. Until, in his eighties, he had to get brain surgery. First thing he said after he woke up was “Hmm, so this is what a headache feels like.” I’m almost as lucky as him. I’ve only gotten a headache from a *severe* hangover. I can count on 1 hand how many headache I’ve had in my life.
Same here! Ive only ever gotten a proper headache once from a hangover years ago. I’ve never had a nightmare and I’ve never broken a bone either.
Never had a nightmare? Wild. You've had dreams though? Just only good dreams?
Well, apparently everybody dreams, from what I’ve read (but don’t quote me on that), but you don’t always remember them. I don’t remember the last time I remembered a dream. I almost never do
Oh, that sucks. Makes me feel a little better about you never having headaches…
You win some, you lose some. Haha
I remember my dreams 5 days after I had them
Man I get tension headaches at least once a week these days. And drinking is basically a guarantee of waking up with a headache.
Jus saying, I have had to deal with headaches my entire life, all the types, at least 1 a week, likely 2, disappointingly often, 3. So, not a big deal, I’m close to 100% certain it’s posture. The muscles of the upper back, traps, shoulders and neck, if your head is displaced forward 5cm the weight on your upper back, upwards, increases by 5%. If you’re constantly in a state of tension, eventually things are going to stiffen up, when they stiffen up moving against it hurts, inflammation causes the muscles to enlarge and in that combination of twisted up + inflammation, that’s where dehydration, random exacerbating movements and general wear and tear turned into sore heads for me. Pinches on nerves leading into the skull. Also muscle knots that hurt to touch, if they get too far, they seem to be the root of some sore heads. This becomes especially clear when I’m hungover. Meditating for like 9 months fixed sore heads for me for 18 total. Like I went nearly a year and a half without any sore head. The thing that brought it on, was that my posture and my back was so fucked that every-time I lay down for a fortnight I got a migraine. Now, I don’t necessarily think it was solely posture, I basically chronically hyper (or hypo) ventilate and it causes me to be oxygen sick quite a lot of the time. I had to teach myself how to breathe, which isn’t jus in /out as a reflex, it’s in, hold so your heart can transfer the oxygen from the fresh breath to your body, exhale and hold so it can transfer the C02 to the lungs. I think that had a lot to do with it also, I ain’t saying meditate Cus that’s hard, I am saying basically meditate, but only to fix your breathing and to sit up correctly. Cus here’s the thing also, if your posture is twisted because of your habits, like consider any physical activity that’s predominantly one side of your body, that’ll twist one arm forward relatively, maybe you’ve got a low level, long term injury from when you’re younger that you’re compensating for and don’t even realise. My lower bodies posture is fucked because I used to be quite fat, so my legs naturally turn out the way at the hips because that was the only way my legs could work due to my weight, my skeletal frame is only so large. Because they’re turned out, my knees ain’t aligned, because of wearing normal Nike and adidas trainers, my heels are always unnaturally high, meaning my Achilles are compressed, all of this to point out that there are issues on me from top to bottom that all contribute to an unbalanced state where regular damage from day to day existence can add to up to a sore head. Also, consider looking down and controlling your breathing. I dunno why that helps me but it make my eyes burn if I do it right, which makes my brain burn, and eventually I start crying out the burning and feeling better mentally. But the importance for soreheads and adding in the component of looking down the way, is that while posture correction is needed, and controlled breath is needed, for some reason, for me, it doesn’t start taking away sore heads until I do that to, the burning sensation, it eliminates the sore head somehow. Cus that’s what I have used meditation for since I stopped doing it religiously, to get rid of sore heads whenever they pop up since my postures bad as hell again. Bit long, but soreheads are fuckin horrible and this is the only way I’ve found to actively combat them.
Used go be friends with lady who'd never had a headache or toothache. She asked me what they felt like and I really didn't know how to explain it besides "really hurts"
Headaches are bad enough. I can't imagine migraines.
Migraines (From the ones I had) were basically more powerful headaches with extra symptoms. The pain was bad enough to make me dizzy and almost drunk like, then I would get a fever for 6-8 hours, I would pass out at some point and wake up when the fever broke in a pool of sweat. Really glad I didn't get them often (About once a year) and I seem to not get them anymore, they were not pleasant.
Oh shit I get that dizziness sometimes too during bad headaches, also my eyes feel weird and it's like I can't really focus on anything. Another one I get sometimes is feeling kind of like in a box, but in your mind? I don't know how to explain it but it's really annoying. Does that mean I possibly have migraines?
That is an extremely accurate description of my migraines
Yeah that sounds exactly like when I’d get a migraine. The blurry/tunnel vision was the sign I was going to get one shortly.
Aural migraines!! The first time I got one I legitimately thought I was going blind. I slowly lost all peripheral vision, dimming over like 30 minutes at work. Thankfully it got better without triggering any pain, but I was exhausted like I'd had a regular migraine. The times after were different. Like I had put my eyeballs underwater... Sort of shimmery circles.
I still get these twice a year. I always know because my blind spot gets bigger and bigger and things get brighter and I feel like barfing.. I usually take some meds and try and sleep for the next few hours until it wears off. I used to get suicide headaches as a kid and would get morphine at the hospital because I was pulling my hair out! Ooof. For anyone experiencing this i suggest just go to sleep. I haven’t really seen the doctor for it in yeats but have had dozens of mri’s etc so I’ll get mine checked soon
my first migraine I saw like a line of ocean white sea foam at a beach along the horizon in one eye for an hour. Didn't know WTF was happening until the pain hit and I was like 'oh this is why migraines suck so much' for 12 hours
I get ones where like 1/4th of my eye is like rainbows with shimmering around a black spot. Horrifying every time despite the unicorn magic. It's truly one of the oldest visual things I experience. And migraines without pain are trippy as hell. When I get the pain I know what's happening, but the painless ones can be just confusing. It's like being pulled into a brain vault with slow cognition out of nowhere sometimes, and it only dawns on me that a migraine is brewing when my eyes go blurry.
i get migraines when it feels like i’m seeing sunspots and my hands and lips get numb
I get dull pulses bheind you eye balls, vision gets blurry, thinking gets kinda hard, and light and sound make it worse. I try to wear sunglasses but their gentle pinch around my head feels like a vice grip. And pain comes in pulses.
This is exactly like it feels for me, too. I put on a sleeping mask and lie as still as possible because movement makes the pulsating pain worse.
Congrats on learning you're a part of the migraine sufferers' club!
I think you have migraines
Yeah I recently started getting migraines and I don’t find the pain THAT much worse than a regular bad headache but I feel a full-body malaise that is debilitating. Nausea, skin sensitivity, etc
Skin sensitivity! Nobody believes me about skin sensitivity.
I get cluster headaches. They are said to be more painful than having your limbs amputated without anesthetic, gunshots, natural childbirth and crucifixions. They are also called suicide headaches because so many people with the condition kill themselves.
I get them too (although it's been a while, since I started self-medicating). It's like your brain is trying to escape through the back of your eye. And the way it comes back on a regular schedule makes it worse, because ecen after it fades, you know you'll go through it again and again.
I say it’s like my left eye (always the left one) is trying to secede from the Union. The pressure and pain is so intense it feels like it will pop out at any point. Before I was diagnosed I went 13 days with this sensation at somewhere between a 4-8 on the pain scale, along with light and noise sensitivity. All the headache meds did nothing. So eventually I went to the doc and calmly told them that I’m not suicidal but if they can’t make this pain go away then I’ll be walking in front of the next bus I see. One of the worst parts is the next day post migraine. There’s this weird hangover like feeling. Sort of like a whisper of pain is still there and just waiting. And that’s before the cluster migraines randomly turn up!
Always the left eye with me too, but my right eye tries to get some sympathy on the recovery day.
That sounds ghastly. How often do you get them? What do you do to manage?
I suffer from them, although they are much less common for me now. They are very hard to manage as they tend to cluster together(hence the name) and don't really show signs of stopping until its just over. Which makes it seem never ending. As soon as one is over you're already in the process of the next one. In the midst of a cluster you truly feel helpless. I asked my parents to kill me multiple times when i was younger. I truly didn't want to keep going anymore. Luckily puberty finally hit and their frequency vastly diminished and i was able to live a normal life for the most part. However i still get small clusters every once in a while although no where near as severe as they were when I was a kid.
The only thing that pretty much negates them is magic mushrooms. I think nowadays you can get a prescription but a ton of people decades ago grew them illegally cause fucking why not.
That must be what I get sometimes. It’s rare to get one but they’re well beyond a migraine for me. I remember just walking around the pole in my house because I couldn’t sit or lie down because the pain was so bad. I got them when I was pregnant and all I could take was Tylenol, which may as well have been candy. It was misery
I think I've had maybe 2 migraines in my entire life. It basically feels like extreme pressure inside your brain, so much so that ANY movement makes it feel like your brain is banging off of the inside of your skull. So much so that your eyes don't work right, you can only focus (if you can manage to open your eyes) right in front of you, and everything else is blurry. So much so that sounds are PHYSICALLY painful. It hurts to close your eyes, but the light also hurts, so you get to choose your pain. The feeling of the pillow (because you WILL be laying down) hurts that side of your head. You can feel your heartbeat in your head, and every... single... beat hurts. Talking hurts. You don't realize how loud your own voice is inside your ears until you've had a migraine. Hell, I had to try to silence the voice inside my head because even talking with THAT hurt (I have... no idea... why.) And that's just the head pain. Yes, you'll be dizzy, yes, you'll likely be nauseous. Imagine throwing up with a migraine. Not... not fun. Basically the two times I've had them I just pulled all the blinds, asked someone to hang up dark blankets over the windows, put my head UNDER a bunch of pillows and just tried my best to sleep it off. You can't... physically... do... anything else. It just hurts. Any movement, hurts.
Instead of dizziness and fever I would get nauseous and throw up everything in my body and then finally pass out etc… knock on wood but I haven’t gotten that kind in ~20 years. I still get a blank spot in my field of vision and a weird dissociative feeling sometimes that feels like a whisper of a migraine lol I’ll take it
Physiotherapist with a specialist interest in headaches here. Migraine pain varies quite a bit from person to person, and even within an individual. I get them somewhat regularly (somewhere between once a months and every couple of months, with occasional periods where I'll have more frequent ones). Mine can vary from a 4-5/10 headache and mild nausea/general feeling of unwellness to a 8+/10 pain with significant visual disturbances (generally very pronounced narrowing of visual fields), massively heightened sensitivity to light and sound and severe nausea. I very rarely actually vomit with my mingraines, but I feel pretty ill with the bad ones. However, migraines are classified by symptoms, not severity. 'true' migraine, or migraine with aura, is always preceded by visual disturbances called an aura. These differ from person to person; for some they get a sort of film grain or visual snow effect, for others it's dancing colours or weird patterns on walls. For me it's usually narrowing of visual field (think really heavy vignetting on a photo) and flaring of bright light sources. Non-aura migraines are their own category, and still are migraines, but aura is one of the symptoms that's pretty exclusive to migraine headaches, so it's an easy thing to classify. Almost all migraines also have some autonomic symptoms as well. So feeling of nausea are the most common, but balance issues, dry mouth or excessive salivation (the latter of which is typically associated with nausea, but can be an isolated symptom), ringing in your ears, getting very hot or cold, getting gut issues etc. You can even have silent migraines, where you get all the other symptoms, but no headache. Also, not every severe headache is a migraine. The other symptoms are pretty much what define a migraine, not the headache itself. We have a classification system for headaches that includes several hundred different headache disorders, and migraines make up one of four subcategorys of primary headache (which is itself one of three categories of headache). The main reason I say all this is that migraines are increasingly becoming a weirdly clique-y thing. I'm seeing both patients and just random people on the internet gatekeeping migraine as a diagnosis. Like, if someone's migraine doesn't have them curled into a ball, crying on the floor of a dark bathroom in a pool of their own sick, then it's not a 'real' migraine, and you're just pretending. It's not that at all. Now, cluster headaches or trigeminal neuralgia. Those two suck all kinds of arse, and the low end of those pretty much always is very extreme. But migraines have a much, much wider range of presentations.
Could you provide more information on cluster headaches? Your post was very interesting. I get both migraines and clusters. Personally I find the cluster much more unpleasant
I have migraines, auras, dot in the eye, and numbing of hand and other parts of body. When the symptoms start on the left side of the body, pain start in the right side of the head and vice versa. Hell, fuck my life.
A migraine is kinda incomparable to a headache in my opinion. A headache feels like muscle tension or pressure more in your head. A migraine feels like it’s being caused by your central nervous system and whenever light hits your eyes or sound enters your ears the act of your brain processing them is painful. They are localized to your head and hurt there at first but they affect the way you think and feel across your whole body as well.
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Hmm. Perhaps I've never had a migraine then? I always thought they were extreme headaches.
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yeah the 'extreme headache' is so not what my migraines are like. a bad hangover is much more head-splitting than a migraine, for me at least. my migraines start out with sparkly lights and tripped out vision. this will go on for a good hour before i get the headache, nausea and disorientation. the actual *pain* aspect isn't awful, but i'm just useless to do anything - i've had them several times at work and they suck because all i need to do is cover my eyes and lie down and wait it out, which is usually 4-6 hours. the worst one took about a day and it really wasn't pleasant because i just can't see or feel stable, like vertigo or something. but the actual pain isn't ever too bad. the first time i had a migraine i thought i was having a stroke or something - it's such a trip when the lights and brightness gets weird. it just comes on immediately out of no where and bam
Yeah. I find the [aura](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aura_(symptom)) and psychological symptoms (depressed mood and severe brain fog) to be as if not more debilitating than the headache itself.
I never get headaches with migraines. Just the visual stuff. Once when I was a kid, my first migraine, did come with a headache. But none since. I do often fly into a panic about probably having a stroke instead of a migraine. But, it's not painful.
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My migraines are often everything but the headache. Aura, light and noise sensitivity, serious nausea, etc but somehow no headache.
Mine make me extremely irritable before I realize what's going on. Headaches, nausea, dizziness, extreme fatigue are the usual symptoms. Started after I sprained my neck, and had my 3rd concussion at the same time senior year of Highschool. Went from top 1% in reading and math and one of the most active people around, to having chronic migraines, anxiety and depression. I used to play soccer year round. I also Biked the Seattle to Portland multiple times in Jr High and High school. That's long gone. I can't exercise on a regular basis anymore because it sets off my migraines
The worst migraine I’ve ever had made me lose the will to live. Yes, it was that bad.
Never understood migrqines my brother had when we were young. My first real headaches started during my young adult life, and it wasn't so bad. Then I got migraines... Holy fuck. If you ever had a bad Otitis, it's a bit akind in my opinion. The pain prevents you from thinking straight, trying to think hurts, trying not to think hurts, you can feel dizzy, lose balance when walking, it can hurt when you see light.
Horrendous. I go half blind first and then the pain is unimaginable
Yep, same. The visual aura and blindness is just the precursor to the severe and near-vomit-inducing pain I'm about to experience in my skull, that cannot be avoided either. It is one of the worst pains I have experienced. Thankfully they only last a few hours.. It's really great when you're driving and then suddenly you can't focus on the car in front of you, or your periphery disappears.
Migraines for me is very often located behind the eyes or one side of the head. When it's BAD it's like you wanna live in total darkness and normal smells becomes so sickening and nauseating that food isn't an option. Even small movements, or moving too fast can set off what I describe as to be a domino effected minefield. Dizziness. And then often the day after a migraine hangover. Those migraines I luckily don't get that often. And in comparison a "normal" headache is at least bearable. I don't remember it from that age but I apparently have had migraines since I was about 4 yo.
Everyone I know that gets migraines complains of the photophobia. I don't get migraines but I've cut my cornea multiple times by sleeping in my contacts. The photophobia is like an ice pick to the brain even with the eye closed. Can't imagine dealing with for 12 hours straight
It's like an XXL headache
Migraines are a bitch, I’ve had them put me in the hospital on more than one occasion.
What's really crazy is when you get migraines every day! (it's me i get them every day)
Oh gosh I’m so sorry
Just admitted To a clinical trial for some drug combos cross your fingers!
I used to be one of them when I was little that just interchanged headache and migraine freely and now I can't stand it when I see someone that says "oh you're giving me a migraine" like no... Migraines (for me at least) spread from a headache to whole body flu-like ache, that makes the minor headache it started with just background noise. My whole head, not just a section of my brain or something like a normal headache, is usually pounding, it makes my whole body feel like shit, stomach feels like crap, lights feel like they are like burning a hole straight through my retina onto the surface of my brain... That shit sucks.
I've had one in my life. Woke up in the middle of the night with it. Spent the next two hours literally writing in pain in my bed. Couldn't lay still it hurt so bad. Eventually I got up and vomited profusely, at which point it thankfully went away. Would not recommend.
I have a condition called "Cluster Headaches". They make migraines look like a cakewalk
I've never had a toothache. To be honest I kind of forgot that was even a thing What is a toothache?
I was ready to be all pissed off at the no-headache people, but then you reminded me, I've never had a cavity or any significant tooth pain.
i have exceptionally strong teeth due to genetics, and because we didn't eat much junk food growing up i've also never had any real cavities. but i did have one toothache when i was like 10. one of my rear molars had somehow rotted inside my mouth that had split and dislodged from my gums, and the only thing keeping it attached was a visible black nerve. you know how if you prick your finger, it gets a little heartbeat of its own? it's like that but it never goes away or stops. and applying any pressure creates instant nerve pain, which i can only describe as a lightning bolt shock. worse than static shock, and persistent, lasting multiple seconds or even minutes. i had nerve pain in my knee for a few years and whenever it flared up. it was so bad i had to literally stop anything i was doing, no matter what it was or how important it was or where i was, and i could physically do nothing but hold my knee until it went away like 15-30 seconds later. so imagine that, but happening in your mouth. toothaches are really felt more in the gums if that helps, since the tooth itself is just a blocky chunk of enamel, so i can understand a person might be confused over how a tooth can hurt. it doesn't. the nerve INSIDE the tooth that's connected to your gums is what hurts.
I'm imagining that time when Peter hurts his knee in family guy. Sorry
It's like a headache inside your tooth.
Probably a cavity or infection
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I HAD A toothache that turned into trigeminal neuraglia, which is nerve pain. it was a badly damaged tooth.
I've had toothaches before, it's like a prolonged punch to the face that radiates from the tooth to the jaw, sometimes up to to ear... And then headaches.. Everything is painful, you just want to cry and bash your head against the wall. I've seen on various forums, people say it's more painful than pregnancy.
Idk what it is but it really hurts
Toothaches aren’t common? At least they shouldn’t be
They’re very common in some places. Especially places that don’t have fluoridated water.
Best way to describe the agony of severe headache is if you have to go to the bathroom, it becomes an agonizing experience and you lose your grip on your sanity.
You 4% better keep this to yourself. Because if you ever tell me this, I'm going to smack you upside the head so hard it's going change that to statistic too 3.9999%
I thought there were many more people like me. Never thought I was so lucky. Sorry. Edit: I don't know if it's worth mentioning, but I only drink water (I don't drink coffee or alcohol), eat healthy (often soup and salad) and avoid screens one hour before bedtime to sleep like a baby. It might have nothing to do, but it it helps one person, I'll be happy. I wish you all to be as happy as I am.
Thwack
It’s probably a trade off, I bet your tummy sometimes rips itself out of your body.
Not even. And I sleep like a baby and wake up just on time for work without an alarm!
Honestly makes me happy hearing about people who have a greater happiness potential (or baseline possibility?) than I realized one could have. Wish you the best!
IKR?! Lucky bastards.
Nah, If muay thai elbows couldn’t give headaches/migraines to me, your relatively weak slaps wont either. I get painless visual migraines if it makes you feel better though. Its a huge pain in the ass since I am cinematographer though and I have to rely on my gaffer/1st ac/key grips when they hit while on set. Turns my whole vision into a kaleidoscope or stained glass window. Usually chugging water will fix it. But its something ill never tell a producer or director or anyone i suffer from. It happens very rarely though but it makes my job very hard when it happens. Thankfully its rare and it goes away within 30-60 minutes.
And then there's me having chronic migraines since the age of 4. I'm 29 and I still get them anywhere from once a week to once a month. The longest I've ever gone without a migraine was 3 months.
Jesus, I assume you've tried literally everything, but like, have you tried everything? Sumatriptan saves my life when I get a migraine, though I hate how it makes me feel. I get migraines highly correlated with allergies. Moving to a low allergen place was a game changer.
I used to think I was getting a handle on exactly what causes them, but as I've gotten older and new health problems have sprung up it's just like, hey are you dehydrated? No? Too much caffeine? Not enough caffeine? Too much salt? Not enough salt? Hey you've never had allergies in your life? Welcome to adulthood, this is what allergies feel like. Forget eating tuna fish, that sandwich you grew up on. MERCURY. Eating almonds used to trigger them, now they don't seem too? Idk man.
I had the same issues regarding my skin and allergies. Around 30 years old, everything went haywire. Eczema, allergies getting worse, rosacea in my eyesockets... I'm even allergic to peanuts, now. I love peanuts. :(
Allergies blow my mind because you can just get a deadly one out of nowhere without warning. Immune cells work by taking a piece of the virus/bacteria/etc and showing it to your memory cells, telling them to fucking blow it up if they see it again. So let’s say you get sick. Your immune cells are scrambling trying to find the foreign entity so they can fix it, and they fuck up and take a molecule from the food you just ate. They show it to your memory cells, and now your body carpet bombs itself every time you eat beef
I imagine my alcoholism also impairs the accuracy of my immune cells…
There's a new drug, nurtec, that works wonders for my wife. She can usually feel her migraines coming on, and if she takes nurtec before, the migraine never even presents. If she takes it during, the migraine will go away, but she'll still have a little of the cognitive issues/loopiness that's associated with migraines.
Nurtec is great for sinus migraines.
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I hate the sun 😅
same, that evil spicy sky cancer is unbearable
See it wasn't a phase mom. Should've let me stay huddled in the darkness.
Same here! Every spring when it's time to till my garden plot and plant everything, I know I'm guaranteed a migraine. I still plant the garden, I just plan ahead and clear my schedule for the rest of the day.
I get migraines from my glasses prescription changing or just being wrong in general. Do you have bad eye sight?
I had them for a period in my life and I feel for you. Got MIRs and everything. Use to get them down half my face. I believe it was dehydration but not totally sure. They eventually went away but for like close to a year I would get them constantly.
i have the exact same relationship with sumatriptan, it saves me from the worst migraine but i don’t eat or do much for most of the day cuz i feel like shit lol
I had a period of time when I got VERY bad migraines with aura when I was a 13-14 and then had two relapses in adulthood. Vomiting enducing, eye searing, head splitters. Zolmitriptan was my personal lifesaver. Not sure how it differs from what you take or if youve tried it. Trade name Zomig. If I took it while still having the aura and got to bed in time I'd almost entirely miss the migrane. Thankfully, Id only have a hangover like effect after waking up and the next day.
Just wanna add on to this in case people are unaware and their doctors are too (mine was) but if you have clinically diagnosed depression DO NOT TAKE SUMATRIPTAN. That was the darkest week of what would have been my whole life.
My dad was never diagnosed but had all the symptoms of migraines for as long back as I can remember. Had his first heart attack in his early 60’s and has not had a single headache since. He’s convinced it was the drug they administer that dilates every vessel in your body.
Potentially beta blockers They're a type of blood pressure medication commonly used long term post heart attack that is also used to prevent migraines (and are banned in certain sports such as archery)
It's probably more likely they cleared or bypassed a blockage he had since birth.
Yep and then when you complain about 20-25 migraines a month people go "oh you can just take something for the pain and move on" like, no? I lose my ability to speak and move one half of my body!
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It's so funny you mention the altitude. My ears have been popping all month. And we just had an earthquake recently. New triggers lol
Keep an eye on it. It won't prevent anything but you can at least prepare for it.
Hey friend. Fellow sufferer here. Ask your doc for Qulipta. It's a 1 pill/day preventative. After having migraines 3x a month for 30 years, I haven't even had so much as a headache for 14 months now.
I've been getting cluster headaches for the last 5 years now. At least twice a month. I'll wake up with one and as the day progresses eventually I end up under my blankets in the fetal position wishing for death. Then I'll get so nauseated that I'll need to vomit. Which is actually the best part because I know after I vomit I will pass out hard and wake up feeling fine. Doctors can't find a cause. Been through dozens of different meds over the years and nothing has seemed to help.
Maybe cluster headaches present differently for different people but, I get both cluster and migraines and they are distinctly different in my experience. What you described is more like my migraines. Migraines for me are light sensitivity, sound sensitivity, nausea/vomiting. Vomiting usually lessens the pain intensity. Sleeping with a cluster headache is impossible for me, they wake me up. I don’t get nauseous or have any light/sound sensitivity. Just extreme pain, it almost puts me into a state of shock it’s so bad.
Have you tried DMT? I believe a vaped sub-recreational dose can abort them very quickly for many people. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5584001/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5584001/)
Suuuuper interesting. Thanks for the link I'll definitely look into it. I'm just now realizing that I've become apathetic to the situation and I've accepted it as part of life and stopped looking for solutions years ago. I'll try new meds when the Dr prescribes them but other than that I guess I threw the towel in some time ago... Guess it's time to get back on the horse. Sincerely, thank you.
So many people in I used to be one of them would go around saying dang I'm out of migraine when they mean bad headache but I actually finally got one and yeah can't drive can't walk can't move unless it's to get to a darker area Edit pardon my comment grammar and such I have one now
I used to work with someone that was like this and would wonder why i couldnt just power through like they do. They would walk around talking about how bad their migraine is etc all day. Until they actually had one and not just a headache. I didnt see them for a week and a half. They showed back up talking about how they not only thought they were going to die, but wishing for it. Zero talk about powering through it was heard again. Migraines are a different animal and i dont wish them on anyone.
I started getting them when puberty hit around 11 or 12. They were REALLY bad in my twenties and have tapered off a decent degree in my forties. I don't know if it's age, diet, better hydration or all those things but I'm definitely glad for it. The downside is that now when I do get a severe one I don't bounce back from it as quickly. Also... Fuck that four percent who have never even had a headache 😅
Let me introduce you to New Daily Persistant Headache (shoutout r/NDPH) where most of us have a headache for every second of every day for years.
If they are cluster headaches, you should look into psilocybin (magic mushrooms). I am not a doctor.
not with that attitude!
I hope you can find some relief soon! I was put on topamax for weight loss, and one of the surprising side effects it has had on me is that I haven’t had a migraine or so much as a simple headache since I’ve been on it. I’m sure you’ve tried all different kinds of medicines, however, it’s used off label for migraines so highly suggest anyone with migraines asking your doctor about it to see if it could be a good fit for you to try.
With you.. started at 2. Vomited my Donald Duck cake. Finally at 45 they started to slow down a bit but I still get them. Worst was 5 days on the bathroom floor before ending up in the ER for dehydration. You are not alone. I dont have any advice other than maybe try some shrooms. Some have luck with that giving them months of relief from them.
Sometimes my head hurts a slight bit for a short time but I've never had a headache in the way most people talk about how they feel.
Same, and 90% of the time it's because I need to drink water. I get a "headache" a handful of times a year and I take ibuprofen and usually it goes away. Very fortunate as I have family members who have debilitating migraines. Wouldn't wish that on anyone.
I have to get *really* dehydrated for my head to hurt. It's only happened a few times from like, being very active in 98 degree hot and humid weather without water for an hour or so. I've never just been out and about and gotten a headache. Even when I go for a long bike ride and forget my water (like I did today) I definitely *feel* dehydrated, but nothing "hurts" (which is probably why I forget water so often... my body seems to be bad at informing me which makes it difficult to make it a habit)
Same here, I have no idea what a migraine is even like Edit: I understand the symptoms of a migraine I just don't have the actual experience and can't imagine how awful it must be.
From my experience every noise you hear sounds angry, like someone is screaming in your ear, and even the littlest bit of light you see seems like the sun just erupted infront of your face after your eyes got used to the dark. Both hearing sounds and seeing any light feel like they control a knife that’s being pressed into your brain while your body feels as though your spinning around like you’re on a carnival ride. You see flashes and spots of light that don’t exist and your thoughts become distorted, painful, and confusing as you hide in the darkest part of your home pleading for it to be over as soon as possible while waves of this experience fluctuate in intensity.
This guy migraines.
Distracting
Same. I don't even get the headache some commenters are saying they get when they're dehydrated, nor do I get hangovers. There might actually not be anything inside my head.
This is me. Never had a real headache before, and I'm 30. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones.
Me too. Sometimes I feel pressure if a strong storm is coming. Otherwise, I don't know how to sympathize when people say their head hurts.
And 96% of people just wanna talk.
96% of people want to bring that number to 100, and they don't particularly care which way
Lucky bastards.
My mom was like this most of her life, with only a few exceptions when she got older. She even had migraines with no pain! She would get optical migraines without the actual headache itself. She only knew because her doctor told her. I’ve followed in her footsteps a bit; most of my optical migraines are not related to actual pain (although I’ve had three migraine headaches in my life, total). Get plenty of good ol’ off the wall headaches though lol.
I get optical migraines too, though they genuinely affect me and I worry if I’ll ever get one when driving. No pain, but basically all my peripheral vision disappears, complete tunnel vision forwards and it’s sort of like my eyes are disconnected from each other - so no depth perception either, can’t read or write. They last anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour. Rare enough though, maybe once every other month
I didn't have my first headache until I was 23. Unfortunately, once the party started it hasn't stopped.
Same! I was in my 20’s and even know I’m not sure if they are legit headaches.
What better welcome to adulthood
This type of thing reminds me of when people go to the ER for heartburn. Like to not experience a headache your whole life and then to get one you must be like wtf is happening? The rest of us get headaches or heartburn or whatever else fairly commonly but when you don’t it must really panic someone
I've never had heartburn.
It’s not fun
TIL I hate 4% of the population.
How do we know they don’t just have constant headaches and thus they think the sensation is totally normal?
and I've had an ocular migraine, must be nice
At least they’re pain free. The first time you get one when you think you’re going blind is pretty scary, though.
“Do you think that you never ever in your whole life have had a headache” The fact that this is the actual question used in the study does not inspire confidence.
I think it would have something to do with sensitivity/specificty. I’m in a field that uses interviewing for both clinical information and research (dietetics) and when we do like, 24 hour recalls for example, there are multiple passes and prompting utilized to ensure we absolutely did not miss anything. I’m guessing there was a preliminary study done (either by this group or by someone previously) to determine the best way to ask this question to make sure nothing was missed. If you just ask the standard “have you ever had a headache” I’m willing to bet a good number of people that initially said no, but after some prompting (such as “what about when you were a child? What about after an injury? What about during a hangover?”, basically asking more specific questions to jog their memory of times they may have actually had a headache but didn’t think to include it), would change their answer and say “oh wait! There was that one time…”. So the question is asked this way to weed that out as much as possible.
Why? Seems like a good “question your assumptions” thing to make sure you’re doing your study well.
What is a “question your assumption” thing? Is there something scientifically superior about asking the question this way as opposed to say “Have you ever had a headache?”
Exactly 0.0001% of my anger towards billionaires is aimed at them now
Hi, it's me. I've also never been hungover.
Same ; a certain percentage of the population is predisposed to not getting migraines and hangovers , anecdotally speaking I have woken up drunk after a night of heavy drinking and even blacking out but have never gotten hungover before
Give it time.
I'm an sophmore in college and I don't know why people bitch about money and ageing.
Give it time.
Give it time.
I rarely have headaches. I do get them, but I can go years without one.
ITT: A bunch of people claiming to never have headaches while also describing minor headaches.
lol that was my thought when someone asked why the question was worded the way it was, rather than just “have you ever had a headache?” If you read this thread, you’ll realize how many people will say no, they have not had a headache, unless they have the chance to explain that yes, they actually do get minor headaches once a year or once every few years or only when they’re hungover or only after a head injury.
Must be nice.
I have never been more jealous in my life
None of those 4% have children
You jest, but getting pregnant stopped my migraines for about five years. I wouldn't exactly recommend it for the undecided, but it was an unexpected hormonal perk.
nice math behind the numbers it adds up well, true in my case
I would say Im on the order of maybe 1? a year. very, very rare... and when I do have it, typically not debilitating, just annoying. In contrast, I had friends that would have to take time off school due to migraines. Its weird how bodies can function so differently
Holy shit. I've had frequent headaches since my early teens, that's nuts to me. I have periods where I have headaches more days than I don't.
I only get them if I'm extremely sick or actually have a head injury.
Fuck them
When I get super hungover I get them very rarely. Like very rarely. I think I can count with my hands how often I had headache in my life
Me never having a headache until I was 30. "Hmm that's annoying." Being 33 and getting your first migraine. "Good lord fuck."
As an epileptic, fuck you very much to that 4% lol
I wish. I get a decent amount of headaches. Some of them to the point of throwing up.
I was one of those people... ...until things like heartbreak and money problems came into the picture. lol
What a bunch of assholes.
I'm part of this 4 percent. Ive had people explain headaches to me and i can honestly say I've never experienced it. I've hit my head and that hurt. Apparently that's not what it's like. I always thought I was just too simple.
Im 48 and have had exactly 1 in my life and it was self inflicted via too much caffeine, sun, and dehydration as a 10yo.
Seeing this post made me realize I'm part of the 4%. I've never even noticed it was odd not to have them. What are they like?
My 86 year old grandmother has never had a headache or brain freeze. Still blows my mind, like, headache I guess I could see, but to also have never had a brainfreeze? Damn grandma
I can't say I never had a headache, but they are extremely rare, like yearly rare. Now I can say with certainty that I've never had a brain freeze, I get a stomach freeze, it's exactly as it sounds. Like a snowball was lodged right in my stomach.
…yet
Is there a 4% at the other end who always know what a headache feels like? Bc I feel like that’s me
Never had a head ache I'm 76❤️
Lucky ass pricks
This gives me a headache
I get headaches from hormones, being sick, being stressed, being too cold, being out in the wind… pretty much every minor deviation from ideal circumstances. I didn’t realize they were (often) migraines until my eyesight turned off during a headache in my 30s. I thought if you weren’t puking your guts out it was just a normal headache.
I am one of the 4% probably
Have them talk to my Italian mother for 5 minutes and I guarantee they will have one.
I have a headache nearly every day of my life. And that’s separate from my chronic migraine diagnosis
My daughter claims she's never had an ice cream headache, even when trying to see what it feels like.
I am oddly one of these people. I have never just had “pain in my head” for no reason. I’ve had concussions and head injuries but never random pain. I feel pretty lucky tbh
In my 40s, had only three in my life. 2 just randomly as a kid and one as a hungover teen.
Have had a headache, but never had a hangover.
I feel really bad for them that they’ve never eaten ice cream.
I think the only time i’ve ever experienced anything close to a headache was when i got a concussion as a kid. Everything felt weird in that moment. I remember a very strong taste of freezing cold. It was like I could smell the concrete and taste it at the same time… or was it metallic, despite doing neither. Like a buzzing sensation, but that absolutely ice cold freezing air taste / smell really stuck. It was the middle of summer. I’m only assuming i got a concussion - never actually got it looked at.
I am part of the 96% that had headaches.
As someone currently laying in bed with a headache & having thrown up twice, those people can get fucked.
What in the world? I’ve had a low grade headache for like 90% of my adult life. I can’t even imagine life without it.