I am on 1.5mg pizotifen and also titrating up on amitriptyline, currently at 25mg. I am starting to feel some improvement. However I have severe head pressure today which I think has been caused by barometric changes in the weather (rain, lightning, thunder, stormy skies). I am hoping that as i increment the ami that I will have more relief. However, in the meantime is there anything I can utilise to manage this? Does anyone have any suggestions?
TIA, Mary
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Hi and welcome. No doctors here we shouldn’t be prescribing. That head pressure is the migraineous element, the whole crux of the condition so neurologist tells me… Whoever prescribed your preventatives should have told you what Pain killing abortives you can take and how often if symptoms are really too much to bear. There will be upper limits in both dosage and regularity. Speak to them. However from experience hoping any preventative can cause increased symptoms and increased intensity of existing system and it may be best to just wait it out. It may pass once body adjusts. All being well as you increase the preventatives dose these symptoms will reduce. The aim of preventatives is to reduce your increased sensitivities to such stimuli as the weather conditions you mention. Doesn’t happen overnight I am afraid. Can take weeks or even months. All these drugs are changing chemicals in the brain and that doesn’t happen very often in sensitive migrainy type brain’s without the owner of that brain noticing. Personally I would sit it out otherwise how will you know what works long-term. Much depends on your individual pain threshold. I can put up with the head pressure discomfort. It’s the fact it stops me walking upright and in a straight !one that frustrates! Helen
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Thanks Helen. I appreciate your prompt reply. It just feels good to have someone know what head pressure is. I can put up with a fair amount of pain during the day, but it becomes a huge problem at night. I just cannot sleep with that amount of pain. I was just wondering how others get through the night with head pressure. Maybe some home remedies? Doctors here just give you a script for every question you ask.
This is my third relapse. My first 2 episodes were mainly abdominal migraines, dizziness and vertigo. I was able to go into remission twice for 10 years each. This time it is all about headaches and head pressure, which I have not had before and I am finding it difficult to deal with the pain. Mary
Then let me just guess. You are of an age to be peri/menopausal? The condition tends to morph from vertigo/dizziness to more headache/migraine or vice versa with the passage of time. One theory is pain is easier to control than dizziness.
Oh head pressure. Know all about it. For what good it would do could write a book about it. Yep lying in bed the head pressure is so bad your head is so tender even the softest pillow feels like a lump of concrete and you cannot bear to rest your head on it. So you sit up with accompanying vertigo and then the head pressure increases in a matter of seconds til you expect your brain to burst out all over the bed clothes so you oh so slowly and gently lie back down only for the entire sequence to start all over again. That how it goes? I have had it last more than a week at a time.
Cure for pain is painkillers. Search this site for abortives. Many types from aspirin, paracetamol to specialist migraine remedies. You should be able to speak to a pharmacist if you need further clarification of what’s safest with the Ami. What’s most likely to help you will only learn by trial and error. Treat the head pressure as if it is a migraine because that’s what it is, atypical migraine. Ami itself is widely used for chronic pain in many conditions in addition to being used for migraine prevention.
As for homemade remedies people have pressed bags of frozen peas to their foreheads but I cannot imagine that would do much for head pressure.
Have a read around the condition generally. Adopt the other life amendments, quit/reduce caffeine and alcohol, try migraine diet maybe, think on triggers etc, etc. Might help.
I am actually post menopause. I don’t drink coffee or alcohol, have never smoked and eat healthy. I am however prone to motion sickness
Sounds like you and me could have been twins! Ditto. Migraines for the majority occur increasingly less often in later life or so I read. Many find they stop completely at/post menopause. Mine returned then as MAV after a very long remission, since menarche in fact. Apparently when migraines stop/go into long-term remission that is when they are most likely to return as vertigo/dizziness/MAV at a later date. Motion sickness is a strong indicator of balance dysfunction and affects a huge number of migraineurs. I never knew all this until fairly recently and looking back now I can see I was a MAV case just waiting to happen. It’s good to know I had and enjoyed all those in-between years in blissful ignorance.
Yes Helen, in hindsight I had lots of red flags flying in my face but I blissfully ignored them. All the mini episodes were so minor and transient, that I took them in my stride. Some paracetamol and some stemetil at bedtime and I was good to go the next day. During the 10 years I was in remission I didn’t have any days off work. I can see now that I should have been more proactive. I should have rested more and looked after myself better.
I doubt very much whether it would have made any difference. Best Enjoy Life While you can. Nobody would have foreseen MAV and doctors only treat the symptoms presented. They don’t start handing out preventatives in advance. I think starting preventatives whilst the dizziness is still confined to the actual vestibular attacks and isn’t 24/7 which in my book means the balance system is still able to reset itself makes treatment easier and quicker. As more doctors pick up o n Vestibular Migraine fortunately that is happening more and more.
Interestingly read somewhere very recently that the only things that can cause migraine are dehydration, stress and changes in barometric pressure. Whilst I rather doubt the list is so short I am noticing only today storms may well be a trigger. And oddly enough having seen some lightning this morning just now my eyes reacted to reflected light off a vegetable knife something not happened for years. Must be like when people react to flashing lights in TV reports. Frustrating because environmental triggers like storms cannot be avoided. All linked to tolerance thresholds.
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