by: Jesse A. Stoff , MD, MDH, FAAFP Migraines are a form of debilitating headaches that often begins as an aura. An aura is an early warning that something bad is going on- and the aura is different for different people. So some people have an aura where they'll smell something weird. They'll be in their car, in their home and start smelling cigarette smoke, and they don't smoke and nobody around them smokes. Or they may see some flashing lights or they may get a strange numbness feeling someplace. But ther
When I used to work in the emergency room, one of the best treatments for people with vice-like migraines (the kind where a person was light-sensitive and sound-sensitive and they couldn't move because every little movement would cause excruciating pain) was to put them in a dark room and you put them on pure oxygen. You give them five or seven liters a minute of oxygen and you'd just flood their system with oxygen. Because the oxygen level of the blood becomes so high, it actually causes a bit of a reactiv
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS FOR MIGRAINES There are drugs, of course, that could be helpful. There's over-the-counter things that are helpful too such as caffeine. Caffeine is often helpful in the very early stages of a migraine for the same reason, in that it breaks the vascular cycle that's going on, that is part of what's causing the migraine. But there are supplements that can be helpful too, such as magnesium. Magnesium can be very helpful for people with migraines, both as a preventive and a treatment. Now, on