Hey all,
I posted this as a reply to someone else's post, but I figured I may as well make it a new topic.
I am 26yrs old and have had migraines since I was about 11, with chronic daily headaches starting about five yrs ago. I've been to many doctors, tried many meds and alternative therapies, pretty much anything I can get my hands on. And nothing has worked. My pain is centered around my eyes (which are very sensitive) but also is in my jaw, the back of my head, now in my neck and shoulders. It never goes away. It has made my life sooo hard and made me really miserable a lot.
Then I started a job working as a field biologist (I was completely afraid of failure due to missing days because of head pain, but I did it anyway), and for the first time, my headaches were much much better. I went from having daily 2-4 headaches and a weekly 9-10, to daily 1-2 and only two 9-10 migraines in four months! After I left, the headaches went right back to what they were before. The difference in my life there was that I was getting more excersise (non-cardio) then I have ever gotten. The excersise was walking through water 7hrs a day for the first 2 months and the just walking 7hrs a day for the last two months. The only other thing that was different was that I was taking wellbutrin to quit smoking, but I stopped taking that before the field season was over and my head still felt so much better. With my job now there's no way I can get that kind of exercise, so I have to wait until the next field job to see if tons of exercise really was what did it! It also made me really happy, happier then I've been in a long time, who knows if that was because of the exercise, the fact that my head felt so much better orthe anti-depressant.
If it was the exercise, I'm not sure exactly what the exercise would be affecting. I know it can affect a lot of things........and I guess I will have to do a lot of detective work to figure it out. Before this job there were definitely times in my life where I was exercising a lot.....I used to play a lot of sports, but that never helped. In fact, sometimes sports would make me overheat and get a migraine. So if it is the exercise then it is a certain type. I am going to go on wellbutrin again just to make sure that that wasn't it. And if anyone has had great success with wellbutrin, please let me know! I tried a different anti-depressant years back (amyltriplaline i think) and the only thing that did was make me gain weight! I've never participated in these chat rooms because it makes me real sad that other people have to deal with what I do, but I felt like I should share this one!