A Home Remedy for Migraines … Really
Start:You ever had a migraine?
I had my first one at the age of 14. It was a Friday and I was in junior high. I was sitting in class when I noticed patches of my vision began to turn into blind spots. I was deeply disturbed … what is going on? Am I going blind? I told my teacher (I think it was my second period class) that I was having some kind of problem with seeing, and I went to the nurse. She had me lay down for a while in a quiet corner of the office, and the blind spots turned into patches and patterns of shimmering flat blue-green lights which tapered off … as the pain started.
You know the pain. A throbbing vice grip that cinches down behind the eyes and screams at you incessantly with paralyzing intensity.
(Hey, don’t remind us, Daniel.)
(Sorry.)
I think the nurse had an inkling of what was going on, and felt I should go home. I called my mother to get me (the school was two miles from my home) and she refused.
Refused.
(My mother had issues.)
So I walked. Half way home was the first and only time I threw up from a migraine.
Now, if migraines aren’t bad enough, to add insult to injury there’s the nagging, low-grade attention-dulling headache that follows you through the next day. (I suspect these feel a little like hangovers, but I’ve never had a full-blown hangover, so I can’t compare the two.)
Now, I am not a chronic sufferer of migraines compared to some, and back (eh-hem) years ago doctors had no way to treat them. Over more recent years the medical community has found treatments for victims of chronic migraines, but I didn’t fall into that category.
About fifteen years ago, my mother discovered something that cut off the headache before it could get started. It worked for my dad, too, who has a very different metabolism and physiology, and I discovered it worked for me as well.
She discovered that if she can catch the symptoms of a migraine coming on as soon as she could, taking a muscle relaxer would “short-circuit†the headache. She would be left with only the “hangover†part of the migraine, but even that wouldn’t be as severe.
One fine day I had the “blind spot†symptoms creep up on me, and I realized I had no muscle relaxers available (these are, after all, prescription drugs  blush blush  so I was pretty much stuck).
So I thought I would try a little experiment.
You know what L-Tryptophan is? It’s an amino acid that is produced in turkey when it’s cooked and in milk when you heat it up. I used to take L-Tryptophan in supplement form before it was removed from the market in the 1980’s. The common wisdom at the time was that L-Tryptophan is what makes you sleepy when you consume either of these things, though a quick search on the subject through the internet suggests the reality of it is more complex.
Taking the common wisdom for granted, I made the assumption warm milk could be used as a muscle relaxer, and so I quaffed about a quart of warm milk as quickly as I could.
It worked. Not only did it work, but the “hangover†effect did not seem to be as severe as it had been with the pharmaceutical muscle relaxers.
Now, I’m not going to suggest this will work for everyone. As I said above, my mother had a very different physiology than my father, but the muscle relaxer method worked for both of them. It’s possible the warm milk thing wouldn’t work for either of them, but it does work for me. Also, I am not a chronic sufferer of this malady, and I doubt this would be an effective treatment there.
To make this abundantly clear, I discourage using prescription muscle relaxers to do this without a doctor’s guidance. (I am making the assumption, of course, the doctor will actually listen to you … )
(I tell you, it’s almost as hard as finding a good auto mechanic.)
If you want to try this (see my disclaimer*), here’s what to do:
* You need at least a quart of at least two percent milk. I suspect that there is something in or about the fat content that does the trick, so I always use two percent fat content or higher.
* Heat it up to as hot as you can take it without burning your mouth.
* Drink it as quickly as you can manage it.
* The sooner you catch the symptoms, the better. However, one day I couldn’t get to any warm milk for over a half an hour after the onset of the symptoms, and I was concerned the headache was too far advanced for the warm milk to do any good. It took a while, but it did.
As for the physiological reason this works for me, I frankly haven’t got a clue. I have to admit I’m not current on the mechanism for migraines, but even if I were, it wouldn’t change that it does work for me. (Though, next time I’m with a doctor and thinking about it, I’ll ask and see what he or she has to say.)
I’m thankful I stumbled across this simple but effective remedy, and if you’re an occasional migraine sufferer like me, I hope this brings relief to you, too.
End
Bar
- For those clowns out there (yes, clowns) who would want to somehow hold me responsible for this “warm milk method†not working:
The author is not a medical doctor and makes no claim of medical knowledge. The author furthermore makes no claim of guarantee of the delivery of said relief of headache with the use of the methodology suggested, and assumes no profit in the success or liability in the failure of the methodology to deliver same. (Nor do the cows, moo moo moo.) The use of the aforementioned methodology suggested is at the sole discretion of the user.
Use of said methodology by those who are lactose intolerant is discouraged, unless the user welcomes the company of his or her toilet.
So there.