Feeling good... don't know why!

Specific Illnesses & Conditions VM/MAV
1

Hi all. I thought I would post some positive news since this forum gets me kind of down sometimes. For the past 5 days I’ve been feeling practically symptom free!..Here are some things I’ve been trying to do lately in case this helps anyone else. I can’t really pinpoint which one of them is helping the most.

-I’ve been eliminating beer and wine from my diet. I’m a social drinker and was in denial that these things were huge triggers, but they are. I have been drinking only vodka lately (I just can’t cut alcohol out completely!) and that is helping tremendously.

-I went off birth control about 3 weeks ago, since my husband and I are going to be trying for a baby soon. Although last time I experimented with going off BC, I felt WORSE and had migraines for a month straight, this time I’m doing pretty well. I also went off almost all of my other meds, including Paxil, and cut down my Verapamil intake from 240 mg a day to 80. In a couple weeks, I’ll go off it completely. I thought I’d be feeling worse by now, but who knows anymore.

  • I am trying to not oversleep as often. I have a tendency to oversleep much of the time, due to feeling heavy-headed and dizzy at night and going to be early, and then not getting up because I feel groggy and dizzy in the morning. Lately, I’ve been trying to get no more than 9 hours a sleep or less. I still oversleep beyond this sometimes.

-Exercising. I got lazy about exercise over the summer, and this is when I had a massive flare-up of symptoms. I’m trying to exercise more now, rotating days of elyptical machine and yoga. Exercise seems to give more some more energy.

  • Vitamins. I’ve been taking magnesium, a B-complex vitamin, and folic acid (in prep for baby) daily. Who knows, maybe this is helping?

That’s about it. Check in with me next week and I might feel like crap again, but I wanted to revel in positiveness today. Good luck all!

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Melissa,
So happy you are having some good days.I guess it could be for any of those reasons , keep doing it all !
I know how fabulous that feels… I am having the opposite and trying to understand why !
Hope your good days continue for you forever.
Good luck,

Penny

3

That’s great! I’m sure all those things are helping. I made several of the same changes – regular sleep, no alcohol, no meds, migraine diet, etc. – and I began improving a lot in ~2-3months. It feels SOOO good when these symptoms disappear.

I’d definitely keep up what you are doing. I still get some migraines, but usually only if I’ve missed a meal, missed sleep, or been exposed to some trigger – lights, smells, etc. But, my imbalance and motion sickness have much improved. Everytime I start a new med, it makes me dizzy and gives me bad nausea for 2-5 days, but I’ve had to try some meds because this thing is horrible when very active.

Beer and wine have made me sick for years – small amounts. I never knew about migraines, but wondered why just half a beer or half a glass of red wine would make me so sick – nausea/headache. So, I gave them up a while ago, just 'cause they made me sick. My neuro said that must have been migraines. I thought I had a weak liver or something.

Ah, ice cold vodka
Good Luck!

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Thanks for all the kind words! I hope it continues, I’m traveling this weekend so this should be the ultimate test.