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Saturday, November 08, 2008 Migraines Versus Topamax By Diana Hsieh @ 10:20 PM Hooray! I seem to be past my recent two-and-half week spell of daily migraines. (Yes, that means I had a migraine every day for about 17 days.) From the outset, I knew the cause of my troubles: I'd recently stopped taking the birth control pill after about 15 years of nearly consistent use, so my hormones were totally out of whack. (No, Paul and I are not having children; we've just changed birth control methods.) I'd hoped that the situation would resolve itself, but no such luck. By the second week, the migraines were becoming harder to control with my drug of choice, Excedrin. Even Maxalt, my stronger prescription triptan derivative, wasn't always effective. Frustratingly, even when I wasn't in pain, I was often suffering from a kind of "migraine hangover" that left me unable to think clearly. It was debilitating. And, by gosh by golly, I have a dissertation to write. Normally, to break this kind of migraine run, I go on beta-blockers for a few weeks. They work, albeit with some unpleasant side effects. By lowering my heart rate and blood pressure, any kind of physical exertion -- including the simple act of climbing a set of stairs -- becomes an exhausting chore. However, since the beta-blockers in my medicine cabinet expired in 2005 (that's an indication of just how long it has been since my last run of migraines) I made an appointment to see my doctor for this past Thursday. And wowee, I'm glad that I did. My doctor offered me a different medication to prevent migraines: Topamax. Now, three days later, my migraines are gone. I felt fantastic all day today -- nary a hint of a migraine, nor even any of the common side effects of the medication. Today I even lifted weights without any fatigue. (My good results may not be representative, of course; in general, my migraines are pretty responsive to medication.) Interestingly, Topamax used to be used to prevent seizures, but it's now more commonly used to prevent migraines. And: It is not entirely clear how this medication works for epilepsy or migraines. An epileptic seizure occurs as the result of abnormal electrical signals in the brain. Topamax slows down those signals, helping to prevent seizures. The medication also works similarly for migraine headaches. It is thought that migraines may be triggered by nerve cells in the brain that are too easily excited. Topamax helps calm the nerve cells, working to prevent a migraine from ever starting Notably, migraines used to be thought of as a vascular disorder, but that's been proven false in recent years. More recent research shows that their origins are "neurological, related to a wave of nerve cell activity that sweeps across the brain." I will have to wean myself off the Topamax carefully in a month or so. If I stop cold turkey rather than follow my doctor's instructions about tapering off, I might cause a seizure. That wouldn't be good, obviously. Of course, I'll have to see whether I develop any of the various common side effects of this new drug. However, for the moment, I'm absolutely thrilled with it in comparison to beta-blockers. I feel like I have my life back, at the cost of a few measly bucks. So... THANK YOU, BIG PHARMA! Labels: Health Share |    E-mail Diana Hsieh     PermaLink ()    Comments (New Page)   Subscribe to NoodleFood Blog Posts via Feed Reader   via E-mail Subscribe to NoodleCast Podcasts M4A via iTunes (MP3)   via Feed Reader   via E-mail

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	Saturday, November 8, 2008 at 23:35:54 mst Comment ID: #1 Name: William H Stoddard E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com I have occasional migraines, but a single high-strength Ibuprofen and ten ounces of caffeinated soda get rid of them. More often I wake up with ghost migraines, which have the weird feeling of head bisection and the sense of excessive light on one side, but no actual pain, just a kind of tingly sensation. On the other hand, my girlfriend gets much worse ones and has to take prescription meds for them, and a good friend of ours has total killer migraines and has been through many different treatments, none providing more than temporary benefit. So I entirely sympathize with how nasty an experience they are, especially when you have work that can't be postponed.
	Sunday, November 9, 2008 at 3:52:53 mst Comment ID: #2 Name: Rory Hodgson E-mail: cowboybebop(at)ntlworld.com See the horrors of Western medicine!
	Sunday, November 9, 2008 at 6:15:21 mst Comment ID: #3 Name: Rational Jenn E-mail: rationaljenn(at)gmail.com URL: http://rationaljenn.blogspot.com That's so wonderful! And interesting, too. My brother-in-law has epilepsy and has been on Topamax in the past (don't know if he's currently on it). I know that when he was going through a particularly rough time with seizures, it wasn't until he started Topamax that things got back under control. And he had no ill side effects AND it improved his quality of life. I sometimes wonder if those who complain about Big Pharma ever take the time to consider what life would really be like without such medicines, from Tylenol to Topamax, from antibiotics to anesthetics. I don't like taking meds unless I really have to, but when I (or my family) need it, I'm sure glad to have them easily available.
	Sunday, November 9, 2008 at 7:55:39 mst Comment ID: #4 Name: animal Do a lot of Objectivists choose not to have children? Is it because they don't want to be forced to help someone that they may not rationally value? Do you think this is why Ayn Rand did this? From her novels, I get the sense that Rand may have had some family members that she did not like. Dagny had an evil brother, and Kira had an evil cousin who ruined the lives of some of his family members. I also have a parasitic older brother who expects my parents to help him and tells them they're horrible people if they don't. I would never want to have a child like him. He and a genetic tendency to manic depression and mental illness are reasons that I would be afraid of having children. I think that if I did, I would give them allowances for doing chores, so that they would always expect to have to earn their money. Sometimes I really want children, but I don't think the reasons are really rational. I want to have a kid that looks like me, but more Italian looking. I think Diana and Paul would have pretty and smart children-- i think Asian and Caucasion combinations are pretty.
	Sunday, November 9, 2008 at 9:33:20 mst Comment ID: #5 Name: KPO'M E-mail: ka84796(at)comcast.net I'm glad you like Asian and Caucasian combinations, animal. ;-) Anyway, Diana might like this news: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hLso5tYI88UGOxp5tu4LO0By2E9Q
	Sunday, November 9, 2008 at 10:23:47 mst Comment ID: #6 Name: P I don't know anything about migraines, but congrats on making the big decision to go off the Pill! I went off myself a few months ago after seeing multiple disturbing reports about its long-term (maybe permanent) effects on androgen-binding and therefore possibly reduced libido even after one stops taking it. I also stopped having excruciating middle of the night leg cramps. I don't look forward to strong-arming a gyno into giving me an IUD, though - I've heard they're only technically 'approved' for use in women who have had children. I really resent this patriarchal regulation on what I can do with my body. I understand the risks and besides they've been using IUDs in childless women successfully for ages in Europe. Sigh - the joys of womanhood.
	Sunday, November 9, 2008 at 12:26:31 mst Comment ID: #7 Name: Mike E-mail: mikedialjatnetscapedotnet My girlfriend is just winding down on her migraines, which she gets for about 3 weeks every year around this time. It seems to me that women get migraines far more often than men, but maybe men just don't talk about headaches as much. If migraines were more common to women, however, they would join bras, high heels, pregnancy, menstruation, and crazy clothing sizes as reasons that I wake up every day thankful that I'm a man.
	Sunday, November 9, 2008 at 13:47:29 mst Comment ID: #8 Name: Jim May E-mail: seerak(at)gmail.com All the migraine sufferers I know are male (if you discount my fiance, who had some sort of acupuncture treatment for them fifteen years ago, and hasn't had one since). I happen to be one of them, although I have just about the best of it; they occur very rarely, are usually not much worse than your average tension headache when they do occur, can be dealt with the same way as William's, and are almost always triggered by eating too little. I didn't know I even had migraines until one evening I took the GF to dinner, I had problems reading the menu. Its odd font was bad enough, but I realized that I had shifting blind spots in my field of vision, like the normal one but in the wrong place, in both eyes, and all to the left of center. The weirdest effects were odd sensations of unreality ("am I dreaming this?"), flashing patterns that looked like the lights had ceiling-fans, but they didn't -- and a tingling sensation on my left hand that "walked" from finger to finger (but not the thumb), then disappeared after fifteen minutes. It was almost bad enough to deter me from driving home, but it faded by the end of the meal. No headache, but quite the trip :) Concerned about possible brain issues, I went to get checked out, and was surprised to learn that not only was it a migraine, but most of the headaches I've had fit the profile too. I always imagined migraines to be the kind of gigantic headache that incapacitated people for a day or two, and just laughed at over-the-counter pain relievers... but that is not always the case.
	Sunday, November 9, 2008 at 20:08:12 mst Comment ID: #9 Name: Claire Stories like this are one more reason I want to be a pharmacologist. The biggest one is that I'm fascinated by drug chemistry.
	Monday, November 10, 2008 at 3:37:01 mst Comment ID: #10 Name: Anonymous MR. MAY: The visual symptoms you describe are called a scotoma (plural, scotomata). They can also be related to hypertension, which is how I became acquainted with them. My hypertension got out of control, and I was under a tremendous amount of stress, plus my blood sugar wasn't under control either. I had a scotoma in the right peripheral field of vision. It would wax and wane--start out as a small area of squiggly, waving lines and get bigger and bigger. I also had sometimes horrendous, sometimes low-grade headache (also related to blood sugar issues). After I had been on antihypertensive medication for a while, they eased off. But if I get stressed out (such as with working hard and feeling overwhelmed by life) I see a suggestion that Mr. Scotoma is about to come back, so I back off. As a teenager, I was more or less a walking headache. Tension, migraine--not sure of what type. I got to like the taste of aspirin when chewed... it went from bitter/sour to sweet. The combination of aspirin and acetaminophen sometimes works for me. Occasionally I need something stronger, such as Fioricet, which kills the pain and still leaves me alert enough to work. Some of my worst headaches were when I was having problems with very dry eyes and glare problems with computers all at once. I think that the monitor oscillation was giving me fits, too, along with fluorescent lights.
	Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at 4:52:03 mst Comment ID: #11 Name: Vino E-mail: vinokourovmaxim600(at)gmail.com URL: http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/mesh/headache Interesting situation. I mean, strange that your doctor suggest you Topamaz for migranes, even though it more commonly used to prevent migraines, as you said. But the risk of being it the cause of seizure or epilepsy is quite high and in some countries this pills you only can get with a doctor's prescription only in case you are epileptic. However, you worte this post quite long time ago, I really hope by now everything is gone. And by the way, did you consulted doctor about birth control pills constantly uses? Of course depends of a doctor, but 15 years constantly taken is way too long. Anyway, bless you!
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