How Migraines Work

Does he have migraines? Cooper? Uh? Well, we'll say his name, Aaron Cooper. He didn't mind. He's all over the place. He uh has been asking for this podcast for a couple of years and I finally wrote him to day. I was like, Merry Christmas, jerk. Yeah, can you imagine having a migraine that's bad enough? Having a migraine in Kansas is like a million times words and having to listen to us make fun of it. Uh, Aaron requested this, and we I just want to go ahead and say

Aaron has the RS, which we'll get to. He has alternating sides that they occur on sounds pretty been having since he was a kid, and he has his triggers food based sometimes sugar, caffeine, water, and now, and he has his treatment now, which is when he sees the aura, he knows it's coming too ecceteran migraines, dark room and water and nap for like an hour and a half. And he says he's gotten way better at staving them off. So that's Kopa said it would feature you, so they're

not give me my money. There's the introduction. Is it really? Oh, I'm glad you did that because I had none? Okay, great, Yeah, welcome to the podcast. So Chuck, yes, uh, well, let's talk about my brains. It sounds like, from what you just described, Cooper is sadly um a pretty typical migraine stuffer in that you have to really pay attention to it yourself, figure out what works for you, what triggers it, and when it's coming, and basically treat yourself because doctors

don't really have much of an idea of what migraines are. Um, we know that they're not headaches because headaches are caused by vaso constriction in the brain tightening of blood vessels, right, that is right. Just Uh, they used to think that migraines were caused by vaso dilation, just the opening of blood vessels in the brain. That's still a common factor in migraines. But that's not the only peace to the puzzle, right, Um, Like you said, my migraines typically focus on one side

or the other. Um, they seem to be passed down among families. Yeah, you're I think if one of your parents had had my brains, you're about fifty more likely, and if both of your parents had them, you're seventy percent more likely. Now you were sevent in trouble. Yeah, yeah, your parents. Have you ever had one? No, you don't get them. No, And I seem to remember my mom or my dad saying that they had them. But it may have been a cluster headache. We'll get to those later.

There's there was ten times likelier that it was your dad that said that. Then, because menton has more likely to get cluster heady. But women are more likely to get migraines, right, Like, Uh, eight percent of women get migraines and six percent of men. That would make women three times more likely. Yeah, that's in America, at least twelve to twenty four Americans have migraines million. Right, there's a hundred homeless people worldwide, so they can and this

this is the general overview. They can last anywhere from a few minutes to the some reports of years without stop, which can you imagine, now, why would you be alive still? Yeah, exactly, Like I can't imagine that even an hour, it would be horrible, but years, days, months, it's horrible. I don't get headaches much at all, but when I do, I'm not a happy camper. Loss of vision, vomiting tremors, stroke

like symptoms. These are what migraines can do to you, right, and um that you hit upon something with that last one, the stroke conditions or stroke symptoms. UM. The the migraine has been kind of it's been taken out of the realm of headaches and has recently been reclassified as a neurobiological condition. And UM the stroke symptoms you talked about

some some migraines, some type of migraine. UM see sufferers suffer from UM these stroke like symptoms, like they have cognitive impairment, like they can't recognize words all of a sudden like their armigo numb yeah. Um, they can't talk correctly and when that happens, there's a migraine that coming. Right. Yeah, there's are set up. Oh. Also triggers. That's a big one too. Yeah, that's there's there's always a trigger and they can we'll talk about the triggers in detail, but

they can vary. It's all according to the person. They're different for everybody. Right, So here's what we know so far as going on in the brain. Right, Um, there's some sort of trigger, right, and we'll talk about triggers. But let's say you, um the example used as you didn't eat like you normally do. Yeah, you didn't get out for lunch at noon, um, and something in that lack of routine or changing routine sets off the NO susceptors in the brain pain receptors the remember yeah, um.

The NO susceptors release chemicals called neuropeptides, and neuropeptides are unique their neurotransmitters, which means that this is how one neuron communicates with another. They create the electrochemical imp that creates the language of the brain. Right, you know a lot about the stuff now I do well. Version in the brain, my friend. Yeah. But the and this is

where it relates to migraines. Neuropeptides, these proteins UM can be a neurotransmitter or they could be a neuromodulator, and a neuromodulator can turn the volume up or down on the transmission of other neurotransmitters. Right. In this case, these neuropeptides turn the volume way up on the pain receptors in the brain, and so all of a sudden you start to experience a headache like you've never had before in your entire life. Yeah. Basically makes these pain sensing

cells way more sensitive than they ever would have been, right. Um. The the neuropeptides also, for some reason relax blood vessels in the brain, which causes the vasidilation. Um. But they also think that this is what causes the auras. Yeah, now the auras. We I don't think we saw what that is. It's like a sort of a hallucinogenic visual thing that happens. Um lights lines blurry things, and they will or tunnel visions and they will proceed. It's a

warning sign like migraines are coming. Maybe thirty minutes maybe and a day, but it's a coming. So that's what ours are, right, Um. And they think that that comes from this vasidilation in the brain, Like basically you're your brains just doing something screwy because all of a sudden there's a lot more blood flow and it maybe somebody's getting pressed on, somebody's getting a lot more oxygen's overworking.

Who knows. Well. They can also cause leakage, actual leakage, right eventually they and that makes the tissue around the brain swell in your skull. So you have a lot more oxygen, you have leaking blood vessels, you have these auras, and you have in this cascade of heightened pain reception in the brain, and there is your migraine. As far as we understand it now, this is the most recent thinking of what migraines are. And some guy just told us this like thirty minutes thirty minutes ago. Hot off

the presses. Uh. And since we mentioned triggers, we should talk about those for a second. They can depend on Uh. It's that they're not even the same for everyone. As Coup pointed out, they can be different things for him, like sometimes he said, caffeine will trigger it. Sometimes a lack of caffeine will trigger it. Right, It seems like the one constant in migraines is that they are they are triggered by change. Yeah, yeah, yeah, true, Yeah, that's

really good things. Um so like food related um some say that caffeine, alcohol, cheese, gluten, nuts, soy msg. They can be triggers. Um smells, strong smells, strong smells like skraut onions, cologne. You got an elevator with somebody with really heavy perfume, you might get off the water with an aura happening. Yeah, and you're gonna be like, curse

you snoop dog. Right. They can be behavioral, like we said, if you don't get enough sleep, or if you didn't eat on time, or if you're stressed, or maybe you just had sex or you're not having sex. Not having sex. Second, that's a real bummer. Um. Exercise, you exercise too hard or you don't exercise enough. So it's it's you never can't tell. That's what makes migraines such jerks. No, and this is we should say, like all of these are are like the characteristics the symptoms of all of the

migraine sufferers in the world. Sure, for one person it might be Uh, they might be Uh no sex anchovy, um catheine just suffer. That's my Friday night dude. Right. There's also hormones. Yeah, and that's why they think that women, um might have more than men because of hormonal changes

that women experience that men do not. And there's a lot of correlative evidence among up that implicate hormones in in in migraines like UM, migraines typically start after puberty and women right when the hormones really start kicking in

UM they are very very rare. And women after menopause, when hormones are depleted, they actually can come about again in post mental puzzle women with hormone replacement therapy, UM, they can correlate with menstruation and and uh, when a woman becomes pregnant, has been pregnant, Uh, the migraines often subside or just go away completely. Right. So there's something to that. Oh yeah, there's a lot to it. The sad thing is that we have no idea what it is.

You know, there's some poor schemo out there having a migraine right now and there's nothing anybody can do to help him right now. Well, maybe they're the dulcet tones of Josh Clark and his earbuds will make that go away? You think maybe because there are environmental factors that can make them happen, so maybe they can make them go away. I think that the dulcet tones of my voice was the cause of migraine, like a flashing light like remember

the Nissan pulsar. Do you remember the break light went They actually had to slow the pattern because people were having seizures. Apparently that is probably an urban legend, but it's a good one that I remember from the eighties. That sounds very much like an urban legend. Loud noises, um, strong smells, like we said, weather pattern like rain, yeah, um, either when it's about to come on or it's just changed subsided, especially when it happens quickly e g. The summer,

the change in barometric pressure. I suspect has a lot to do with that. Josh, what are the types of migraines? Well, Chuck, there is the classic migraine. We're gonna start with the second. First, there's the classic migraine that is preceded by an aura of some sort. The head pain comes on and uh, you're in big trouble. Right. There also chronic migraines, which

are arguably among the worst, be more than fifteen a month. Yeah, that's basically a lot of classic a lot of classic migraines, right, um, common migraines. This is migraine pain with no aura. Yeah, no aura. Yeah, it's this is like a burger king

of of horrible headaches, isn't it? Like however you want it? Yeah, but they did say that the common migraine though, while you may not have an aura, there might be feelings of euphoria or cognitive problems signaling like here it's a coming, right, which is so depressing if you think about it, like, man, I feel great and then you think crap. Uh. There are or I'm sorry, ocular migraines, which you get our symptoms without the pain of the headache, and they can

just be like thirty minutes and they go away. So I don't understand if there's no pain and involved, and all you're getting is the hallucinogenic aura symptoms like what's the rub I mean imagine is distracting, but right, and this is probably a little concerning, like you're like, am I losing my mind? I have a brain tumor It's true. I'd like to hear from someone that suffers from ocular migraines. Actually, I wanted a better understanding of that firsthand. Abdominal migraines

common in children, pretty awful. It's like all of the symptoms of a migraine except for the head pain. So you have sensitivity, a light nausea, vomiting um, screeching at anybody who tries to talk to you, that kind of thing, you know. The other thing Coop said is that he very much used to experience while he still experiences the nausea, but he said that he has gained such control over his vomit reflex that he has not thrown up since

nine since Ghostbusters. He said, wow. Yeah, any also reference Seinfeld, of course, because I was gonna say that black and white cookie. That's right. H. Then there are cluster headaches, which we mentioned that men get more often, and they are not migraines, but they say they may be the most painful headache of all. But you remember and Donnie Darko, where Drew Barrymore tells everybody. There's some linguists who said that cellar door is the most beautiful phrase in the

English language. Cluster headaches. Those two words they evoke. Do you know what a grape shot cannonball is? What it looks like. Okay, so I see one of those, But they're white and squishy balls that are connected together, almost like tumors, but they're real circular. They're spherical, right, and they start to like kind of drip and fall off, but they're constantly replaced. That's what comes into my mind's

eye when I hear the word, the term cluster headache. Well, it sounds like it's that bad because it's a sudden explosion of pain after you've gone to sleep, Like you'll be asleep and you'll wake up with this happening very quickly, and it's usually behind one of your eyeballs. I think that's what my dad used to have, because he used to talk about it's right here and he pointed his eye and I would just laugh and say, Dad, you're so funny. So I'm getting that only in one way

or another. The reason they call him cluster heaches is because they occur a bunch of times over the course of a couple of weeks. Then they'll go away, like for a year maybe then they'll come back in clusters in clusters over several weeks or whatever, and then go ahead with a thunderclap headache because I've never heard of that. Thunderclap headaches are um, very sudden, very severe. They're pretty much cluster headache, except they don't follow the same pattern.

They just kind of come and go. They don't seem to follow any kind of pattern really, and it's like they're shorter. But um, if you get thunderclap headache, you may have blood pooling in your brain and you need to go see a doctor. Yeah, that's it's a pretty good sign that there's something very wrong with your brain. Um, And we should say cluster headaches and thunderclap headaches don't tend to occurrent families, whereas my graines to look at you, So how do you know? How do you get diagnosed

with this? Basically you go in and say I think I have a brain tumor, and the doctor starts running tests on you using m ryes, cat scans, spinal taps, rule everything else. Everything else is ruled out, and they go, I think you might have migraines. But since we can't really explain migraines, well, I can't say for certain spinal tap. You ever had one of this? No, well, there's no reason that you should have, have you No, of course

not well not, of course not people have them. But I just you know, you always laugh at spinal tap because the band and the movie, but you don't think about a needle going into your spine. That's what they're doing. They're tapping your spine like you tap a maple tree for syrup. And it's a big it's a big, long, like pretty heavy gauge. It's not like a tiny one. It's big. I'd need more than a local anist at

it for that. My friend knock me out completely. I don't know that they can because they probably have to be um cognizant and aware and in control of your body so you don't move no, thank you. Uh. Some weird symptoms we talked about nausea and vomiting and stuff like that. You can also fart a lot. I've saw that flatulence problem. Flatulence a lot. You can be really thirsty, you can smell weird things that aren't there. You can think that you're appendages have grown in size, like my

arm has grown. If they actually have, it's probably just overeating. If your arm gross. If your appendages grow in size, food cravings, temporary blindness, no fun. This is what Coop suffers from. And he still takes the time to do all those photoshop drops of us because he did a really good job with the Stepbrothers one. I mean, did you look at the detail in it? And they're all really good and so that was the peak. Yeah, so you got a migraine, Josh, what do you do well again?

People people seem to treat themselves, or tend to treat themselves. They figure out what their triggers are, so they become very aware. If you're a um, chocolate sitar, uh, you shouldn't exercise, right. If that's you, that's my Friday night, you're gonna you're gonna stay away from exercise. You're going to stay away from sitar music, and you're gonna not eat chocolate, which sucks, but that's what you're gonna do. And so you're going to prevent it. Right, there's a

cute treatment. There's preventative treatment. So you can prevent it, um by paying attention to what triggers. These things, paying attention to like if you get an aura, yeah, then you're acute. Treatment kicks in, maybe you are going to treat yourself acutely even before an ora kicks in. If if you expose yourself to one year triggers um and then if you if you do get the idea that you're going to have a migraine, you can often treat them.

Like Coupe said, with you know a couple of eccrin migraines, which are really just um insides. Yeah, taylan a advilt non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs, right, and that's going to keep your brain from vasodilating supposedly. Yeah, and with ecceterrin, we should say that they specifically made the migraine UH pill and it's a combination of aspirin, ACTA, menefin, and caffeine, which migraine people said that works for me. You take

these before head pain comes on. Once your head pain comes on, you need something stronger called SUMA trip hand summetric TAN, which is also called immatrix. Remember the immatrics adds with the semi coming at you. Yeah, yeah, right, Well apparently this stuff works after your head has started exploding. Yeah, it works pretty well from what most people say, right right. Um. I think also it's one of those things where there

works for you or it doesn't. I guess if it works really well, you're gonna go all over the internet. Sound great, it is right, um, but I think it cannot work in people. But if you have nausea, if you have vomiting, fortunately for you there is uh summetrip tan I hope that's how you say it, um nasal sprays. Yeah, so you can't puke that back up. There's also injections. If you go at the hospital with the migraine, they're

probably going to give you an injection of that. But as the author says in this article, you can get your very own immatrix injection. Yeah, preventative. They found that. Uh, and this is always so weird with me. For prescription drugs, they find the off label use. They're like, well, your blood pressure meds are stopping your migraines. That's cool. And

there's a whole host of these antidepressants. Uh, Like I said, blood pressure medication, anihistamine, supro heptidine, cholesterol drugs, cardiovascular calcium channel blockers. They can all help with migraines with channel blockers. I wonder if that has to do with this, if it slows down the transmission of neurotransmitters because they go through ion channels. That's where the actual molecules go through. UM, So I wonder if that has something to do with it.

And then obviously with like a blood pressure medicine that's going to keep vasodilation from occurring. UM. And then serotonin, they figured out that, like you said, antidepressants and other drugs that act on serotonin regulation or production have been shown to alleviate migraines or keep migraines from coming up on right, So serotonin has something to do with Sarah to owning hormones, anchovies, the crazy botox supposedly, Well, they just found that one of the weird side effects reported

was that a fewer migraines and fewer headaches. But no one should go and get botox to relieve their migraines. We're not saying that. It's just we call that a sidebar, we do. Uh. And what about what Emily likes to call hokey pokey treatments and what other people call alternative medicine. Well, the one that jumped out at me is butter burr. Yeah, I've never heard of that. I hadn't either, but it's an herbal supplement. The problem is is um it may

contain cancer causing compounds. So it's like, no, we're migraines or early death from cancer. I don't know, Rye Bo Flavian, eat your broccoli. Co enzyme Q tin supplements, cocute tin. Oh you know about cocute tin? Sure? Uh, fever few. It's an herbal supplement that apparently helps. It's an anti inflammatory. And then there are different things you can do like massage, breathing techniques, yoga, acupuncture has been said to help some folks.

If you're into this alternative thing, I think whatever helps you know, well, Chuck, let's finish this. Let's bring this migraine to an in with famous people. Yeah. So apparently there is a theory of the migraine personality that people

who have migraines are more driven, more creative. And then there's a lot of people who are driven in creative or were who had migraines, like we're before migraines killed them, right exactly, Virginia Wolf, Cervantes, uh, Nietzsche, Elvis, Freud, Monet, BEng It's also possible that all these people just happen to have migraines and we're creative famous, and there really isn't a migraine personality. You know. Percy Harvin, some Minnesota

Vikings receiver played for the Florida Gators. Yeah, I was like to have a visceral reaction to that. Yeah, he's a migraine sufferer and he'll u I mean, it keeps him out of practice, out of games. He has to go basically home and seclude himself in a dark room. Apparently they're really really bad, despite the effect he played for Florida. I don't want to I don't want to wish that on anybody. Maybe Tim Tebow, maybe who's this Auburn coach? Yeah, yeah, what about him? Let's wish some

migraines on them. You got anything else, I'm done, so KOPA. I hope buddy, you have a good Christmas and that your migraines. I hope we enlightened you some. He's probably like, no, yeah, I don't even know all this. Yeah, thanks, anyway, this would have been waiting two years for what how about this? Let's wish let's everybody just go and wish that the scientists will hurry up and cure migraines. Come about that. Do you want to learn more about migraines and see

a picture of a brain getting hit by lightning? You can type that word in, Oh, we didn't talk about

the word migraine, Chuck. The etymology of the word migraine, I should say, uh, comes from two words hem acrania half a brain, remember it only hits part of your brain at once, and another word megram, which is actually now another word for migraine, but megrim back in the eighteenth century meant basically a low feeling on a whim, or what a delicate woman would experience, you know, when she You know how women used to feign, or they think women feigned a lot or whatever. This was associated

with the migraines were associated with women. Ah, So megram, hem acrania, migraine got you. Do you want to learn more about migraines and hem acrania and megrims and type in either seagrams or migraine in the search bar at how stuff works dot com and that should bring up something interesting. You should since I said hendy, search parts time for a listener. Mail Josh, this is about first kisses. We got a lot of great emails. I'm going to read one of them now, um, because this is a

nice message attached. Hi guys, including Jerry, I just listen to your podcast I'm Kissing and made me think about my first kiss. I'm twenty seven years old and my first kiss happened but two years ago. When I was growing up, I never dated and sadly not by my own choosing. I would admire the popular boys from Afar and imagine what it would be like to kiss them when go ahead, Okay. When high school came around, I had a lot of friends, but I began feeling bad

about myself because I never had a boyfriend. No one was interested in dating me. I was always the best friend who was just one of the guys. Wait, Chuck, I'm confused. Is this is from a guy or a girl? From a girl? I took a long time. It took a long time, but eventually gained a tentative piece just being single. Then one day strings swelling. Then one day I met Dylan Awesome. We became friends. Six months later, a miracle happened. He actually was interested in me and

I was interested in him. At the same time we started dating. We had our first kiss, which quickly turned into a full blown makeout, which you know, usually the first kis stuff that's going from you know, zero to sixty pretty fast. Right. It was amazing and completely worth waiting for. We are still together and the kisses are frequent. All to say that I want to encourage, Here's where

the good message comes in. All to say that I want to encourage anyone out there who feels like they are a late bloomer in life and the romance department. I believe there's a lid for every pot, and someday that person who was worth the weight will show up in your life. I'm a side note. When I first started listening to your podcast, I thought the woman at the beginning was saying from house to Forks dot com. I was very confused how it related. That is from

Leah in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Earth, Leah, thank you very much for writing in stay warm up there in Calgary this winter. That was a late bloomer, not um, you're just going that well, you threw me off. I want to hear some late bloomer stories that are none. I was just a late bloomer and their people bloom at different times, and I'm still blooming buddy, I want to hear late bloomer stories that don't necessarily have anything to do with kissing. But if you bloomed lately in some realm,

I want to hear about it. Do you want to hear about it? Absolutely? We want to hear some emails about it. You can wrap it up and send it to stuff Podcasts at how stuff works dot com for moral on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, Click on the podcast on in the upper right corner of our homepage. The House staff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. M HM brought to you

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