Speaker 1: Hey, this is Fannie and Samantha. I'm welcome to stuff
Speaker 1: I've never told your protection if I heart radio. So
Speaker 1: today's question is an easy one. Do you suffer from
Speaker 1: migraine Samantha. Nope, I don't, I will say. I know
Speaker 1: that just sounds like such an easy, privileged answer. I've
Speaker 1: probably had a migraine three times in my life, and
Speaker 1: they're intense, but I don't typically suffer from migraines. That's
Speaker 1: not one of my tortures. Well, I'll lucky for you
Speaker 1: because I do. And I go through phases where I'll
Speaker 1: get them a lot and then phases where I don't
Speaker 1: get them that much. So I recently have entered a phase, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: where I'm starting to get them a lot again. I mean,
Speaker 1: it takes you out for an entire day. And I
Speaker 1: used to get them so much I was a kid,
Speaker 1: Like I just have so many memories of being at
Speaker 1: media play and throwing up all over the store because
Speaker 1: that's that was one of the things, Like the pain
Speaker 1: would get so intense, I would throw up and sometimes
Speaker 1: I would like pass out, like I would see spots.
Speaker 1: I know not everybody gets warning signs, but mine was
Speaker 1: like kind of a dimness and a flashing in front
Speaker 1: of my eyes, and then I would know, oh no,
Speaker 1: that I'm going to be freezing cold and vomit and
Speaker 1: it's gonna last for hours and I'm gonna want to die,
Speaker 1: and that's my next. There's nothing I can do about
Speaker 1: it because I didn't go to a doctor for it,
Speaker 1: and they gave me this like really quickly dissolve herble tablet.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but as far as I could tell, it
Speaker 1: never worked. So maybe I should revisit getting treatment. But um,
Speaker 1: it was just something I had to live for me
Speaker 1: when I would have the migraines, if I didn't catch
Speaker 1: it in time, and I had the warning signe to it,
Speaker 1: like I know it well enough, even though I'm only
Speaker 1: head of the times. But it was so significant that
Speaker 1: I knew the minute that my next started hurting and
Speaker 1: going on. My head felt it like it was just
Speaker 1: a severe pain, and then the such sensitivity, and I
Speaker 1: had the splots too. I don't ever threw up. The
Speaker 1: only thing that would ever help me was going to sleep.
Speaker 1: We're taking it neck closing my eyes, making everything dark.
Speaker 1: But if I caught it in time and I actually
Speaker 1: took medication, so and I say medication, like except in migraine,
Speaker 1: the one with cassine. If I took too, I was
Speaker 1: actually okay, So it was it's not obviously for it
Speaker 1: to be that treatable. It's great, but if I didn't
Speaker 1: catch it, it was over and I the only thing
Speaker 1: I could do was laid down. So yeah, I absolutely
Speaker 1: hear that that is an intense level of pain. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of those things where and and this is
Speaker 1: also in a lot of very privileged thing to say,
Speaker 1: but we don't realize how much you value not being
Speaker 1: in pain until your anything, like, how is it possible
Speaker 1: that my head hurts this badly? And I've never been
Speaker 1: appreciative of it not hurting right, And yeah, that is
Speaker 1: the understanding. It was like this chronic pain that we
Speaker 1: don't understand that people just live with. Yeah, yeah, it's thing.
Speaker 1: Was a thing of mine too. And I remember once
Speaker 1: I was at a friend sleepover and I had the
Speaker 1: signals and you know, usually, as you know, Samantha, I
Speaker 1: am the last to sleep and the first to get up,
Speaker 1: And especially then that was at the time where you
Speaker 1: didn't want to be judged or you didn't want to
Speaker 1: be pranked at these sleepovers. But I remember looking at
Speaker 1: my friend and saying, I am going to sleep. Do
Speaker 1: not wake me up, because this is my only chance
Speaker 1: avoid this if I can fall asleep in time. And
Speaker 1: I did. But yeah, they're quite quite painful, and as
Speaker 1: this episode goes into, more women than men have migraines,
Speaker 1: or at least report have migraines. So if you want
Speaker 1: to know why, then please enjoy this classic episode. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff Mom Never told You from house stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey Molly, Hey Kristen, I've got a riddle
Speaker 1: for you. Okay. What does Susan Olson, who played Sydney
Speaker 1: on The Brady Bunch, and Joan Didion have in common? Okay,
Speaker 1: so we've got um Sydy Brady, Syndy Brady adorable pigtails
Speaker 1: and Joan Didion not as adorable. That's harsh. Author of
Speaker 1: the Year Magical Thinking and Essay Collections from the Ventes.
Speaker 1: What do they have in common? I'm going to go
Speaker 1: with fashion sense and love of asparagus. You're wrong. Although
Speaker 1: they both were pretty fashionable. Uh, Dideon and Olsen both
Speaker 1: had problems with chronic migraines. Yikes, they're but they're not alone. No,
Speaker 1: they're not alone. Um, they are two of many women
Speaker 1: who have problems with chronic migraines, because the fact of
Speaker 1: the matter is women have far more migraines than men.
Speaker 1: So real quick, before we examine why that might be, UM,
Speaker 1: let's talk about what a migraine is. Because I think
Speaker 1: the first time I first time I had a migraine
Speaker 1: for a long time, I thought was some other kind
Speaker 1: of headache. I thought it was like a sinus headache
Speaker 1: or something. But UM, to have a migraine here, you
Speaker 1: gotta have some of these moderate to severe pain often
Speaker 1: described as pounding or throbbing pain that affects the whole
Speaker 1: head or shifts from one side of the head, sensitivety
Speaker 1: sensitivity to light, noise or odors, yep, blurred vision, nausea
Speaker 1: or vomiting, stomach upset, abdominal pain, loss of appetite, UH,
Speaker 1: sensations of being very warm or cold, paleness, fatigue, dizziness
Speaker 1: either and UH. You might have an aura, which is
Speaker 1: bright flashing dots or lights that appear to you. And
Speaker 1: this list of symptoms courtesy of web md, which also
Speaker 1: notes that no migraine is really ever the same from
Speaker 1: person to person. I always had teeth pain, pain in
Speaker 1: my teeth when I had a migraine. Really yeah, the
Speaker 1: few migraines that I've had were always preceded by auras.
Speaker 1: So you were an AURA suffer. I was an AURA sufferer.
Speaker 1: And I think one thing also about about migraines is
Speaker 1: that if you haven't had a migraine, you cannot understand
Speaker 1: or relate to what it is. Oh no, I remember
Speaker 1: when I had my first time. I was trying to
Speaker 1: describe it to the coworker of mine. She like gave
Speaker 1: me a hug when she realized that, like someone else
Speaker 1: understood that she was going through m Well, maybe she
Speaker 1: have your hug too, because you are a fellow woman
Speaker 1: who's had migraine problems. Um sevent of women, according to
Speaker 1: the Mayo Clinic, have migraine pain. Well, only six percent
Speaker 1: of men do. So it begs the question why do
Speaker 1: women have more migraines than men? Well, maybe first we
Speaker 1: should talk about UM triggers. Okay, just environmental triggers that
Speaker 1: might cause migraines. We've got things like stress, bright lights,
Speaker 1: weird smells, changes in season, medication, alcohol, aged cheese, I
Speaker 1: mean pretty much anything it seems like can can bring
Speaker 1: on a migraine. Yes, it's actually kind of frustrating because
Speaker 1: some of these things you really just can't avoid. So
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like the triggers would really be gender specific.
Speaker 1: I mean, men and women both encounter aged cheese and
Speaker 1: alcohol at some point. But what you do have to
Speaker 1: remember is that people might respond to triggers in different ways.
Speaker 1: Um Like, let's say there's a cup of coffee and
Speaker 1: you have it has this caffeine that might trigg our migraine. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's probably gonna hit you a little harder as a
Speaker 1: woman than it's going to hit a man, just because
Speaker 1: men are bigger. And that's one thought. Maybe maybe just
Speaker 1: these triggers affect people differently. We also have to take
Speaker 1: family history into account. Um. For instance, identical twins who
Speaker 1: have my are more likely to have both of them
Speaker 1: to have migraines zan fraternal twins. The closer you are
Speaker 1: to a family member who has migraines, the more likely
Speaker 1: you are to have migraines. Like my mom had terrible migraines.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was growing up, and so you
Speaker 1: know I have migraines, and I know that at least
Speaker 1: one of my sisters also suffers from migraines sometimes, so
Speaker 1: the fact that you knew that this family history was
Speaker 1: there probably led you to understanding what was going on
Speaker 1: when you've had your first migraine. You know, there's family history,
Speaker 1: We've got some environmental things, the way that we process
Speaker 1: our bodies, processings different from men. And then they're the hormones,
Speaker 1: the eight words hormones. Women seem to get screwed with hormones.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, I know we have. We have many
Speaker 1: articles on our site about all the things that hormones
Speaker 1: to screw up for us, and the big one is estrogen. Well,
Speaker 1: I was going to talk about how we just have
Speaker 1: more migraines, but talk about the role of estrogen and migraines. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: there there's a pattern between the levels of estrogen and
Speaker 1: woman's body and the frequency of migraines. And we can
Speaker 1: trace all of this to the menstrual cycle. Whenever our
Speaker 1: periods come right before during our periods are estrogen levels drop.
Speaker 1: And it's also during those times that estrogen levels drop,
Speaker 1: migraine levels rise. So the more estrogen that we have
Speaker 1: surging through our blood means the fewer migraines that we
Speaker 1: have And if you want like some backup for this,
Speaker 1: up until the time that girls go through puberty, they
Speaker 1: have the same number migraines as boys. You know, if
Speaker 1: you are a childhood suffer migraines, it's it's all about
Speaker 1: the same until you hit puberty. Yeah. And as many
Speaker 1: as sixties seventy of women who get migraines for court
Speaker 1: that their monthly cycle is related to when they get migraines.
Speaker 1: So when that, you know, that estrogen level drops, then
Speaker 1: then the headaches come. So if you're on let's say
Speaker 1: a hormonal contraceptive, is your form of birth control, that
Speaker 1: might be helping it because it's getting your hormones a
Speaker 1: little bit more level, or it can even worse than it. Um.
Speaker 1: But the positive side is that you know, it can
Speaker 1: be one of the things that you work with your
Speaker 1: doctor to kind of regulate so that you can find
Speaker 1: a form of breath control that both relieves the migraines
Speaker 1: and serves as an effective contraceptive. Yeah. Um. And then
Speaker 1: there's also a chance that it could be triggered by
Speaker 1: an underlying central nervous system disorder, and basically when that happens,
Speaker 1: this disorder would cause a release of neuropeptides or brain
Speaker 1: chemicals which would excite your brain too much and then
Speaker 1: cause migraines. So those could be a couple of other
Speaker 1: m underlying reasons for it, but I think so. The
Speaker 1: newest research to come out about migraines and why we
Speaker 1: get them has to do with something called cortical spreading
Speaker 1: depression or CSD, and CSD is um sort of a
Speaker 1: fan the term for brain excitability, or a literal brain storm,
Speaker 1: if you will. Yeah, it's like your brain. It's just
Speaker 1: there's just too much going on in your brain. And
Speaker 1: maybe that's why women have more migraines, they just have
Speaker 1: busier brains. No, Molly, that's not true. Cortical spreading depression
Speaker 1: happens when you've got these series of waves, waves of
Speaker 1: activity that move across your cortex or the outer layer
Speaker 1: of your brain um. And when these waves occur, first,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of rapid neuron firing, okay, and
Speaker 1: that causes your brain to get more excited, increases the
Speaker 1: blood pressure and the blood flow to your brain because
Speaker 1: all those neurons are firing. And then after that there's
Speaker 1: a wave of what's called neuron inhibition when Basically, the
Speaker 1: neurons aren't totally dormant, but they're really not um they're
Speaker 1: not firing as much. And so once that activity sort
Speaker 1: of slows down in the cortex, that reduces the blood flow.
Speaker 1: So you have this sort of sudden change in blood
Speaker 1: pressure in your brain and that change in press sure
Speaker 1: is where the headache pain from migraines comes from. Gotcha.
Speaker 1: So it's like a roller coaster basically with drops and
Speaker 1: then like even parts. Yes, And a study in Science
Speaker 1: Daily was telling me was that women are just more
Speaker 1: susceptible to these pressure changes. Women have much lower thresholds
Speaker 1: for this, about two to three times lower than men. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just a lot easier for for women to experience
Speaker 1: CSD than men. So okay, so now we know why
Speaker 1: it happens. But I think really quickly should go over
Speaker 1: what you should do if it happens, because web md
Speaker 1: reports that even though more than twenty eight million American
Speaker 1: women get migraines, only three to five percent of them
Speaker 1: actually seek any help for it. Yeah, I just go
Speaker 1: to bed if I can. I have to leave work
Speaker 1: and go to bid Well. That sort of attu is
Speaker 1: what is contributing to migraine being one of top four
Speaker 1: disabling conditions. Yeah, that was reported by World Health Organization
Speaker 1: and they also contributed seventeen billion dollars a year ac
Speaker 1: cording to Scientific American in a lost work, disability payments
Speaker 1: and healthcare expenses. So these headaches are certainly not having
Speaker 1: imaginary effects, even though some people don't sympathize with them.
Speaker 1: But what can we do, Molly, if we have if
Speaker 1: the aura comes on and our head starts pounding, well,
Speaker 1: even if you just want to go straight to bed,
Speaker 1: what you should do is you should make a note
Speaker 1: of it in a journal, Try and remember all the details,
Speaker 1: what you might have eaten, how much sleep you might
Speaker 1: have gotten, so you can start to figure out your triggers,
Speaker 1: because that's really going to help the doctor kind of
Speaker 1: determine what might be the best course for you. And
Speaker 1: then once you figure them out, I mean this sounds,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of overly silly, but then you just
Speaker 1: sort of trying to avoid them, avoid migraines, avoid your triggers,
Speaker 1: regular sleep, exercise, no aged aged cheese. If that's what
Speaker 1: does it for you. You got back on the caffeine,
Speaker 1: and then after that, once you've got your journal, and
Speaker 1: you know your triggers, then you know then the doctor.
Speaker 1: Don't be one of those people who don't seek help
Speaker 1: for it. Talk to your doctor and see what kind
Speaker 1: of medications might be available. And speaking of medications, there
Speaker 1: is a new drug that they've been looking into that
Speaker 1: could be the key to migraine relief. It's a drug
Speaker 1: called ment mementine, mementine that's kind of hard to say,
Speaker 1: and it's being studied UM for its uh, the ability
Speaker 1: to block cortical spreading depression, that brain excitability, So you
Speaker 1: might be able to take mementine and UM and it
Speaker 1: will calm your brain down so that you don't have
Speaker 1: all that active firing and the changes in blood pressure
Speaker 1: and at the end of the day a debilitating headache.
Speaker 1: And regardless of how that turns out, there, I know
Speaker 1: some things work, like pain relieving medications, UM, beta blockers, antidepressants,
Speaker 1: even botox injections have been studied as a way to
Speaker 1: relieve migraines. Goodness, well, I guess I'll make some women
Speaker 1: happy multitasking yep. But also on the upside, if you
Speaker 1: are suffering from migraines, okay, you're a woman, you're suffering
Speaker 1: from migraines and you don't you know, mementine is not
Speaker 1: yet an option for you. You can wrestle easier at
Speaker 1: night because you have a thirty percent lower chance of
Speaker 1: getting breast answer who says that it's a new study
Speaker 1: that just came out. Um, that was reported in a
Speaker 1: bunch of different sources actually, but the one that I
Speaker 1: found was in CBS News, and um, it all has
Speaker 1: to do with those estrogen levels. They're basically saying that
Speaker 1: women who have a lot of migraines have low estrogen levels.
Speaker 1: And if you have low estrogen levels and you're less
Speaker 1: likely to develop breast cancer because women with higher estrogen
Speaker 1: levels are more likely to develop it, then you're always
Speaker 1: looking on the bright side of things. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a pretty big number, Molly though, that is. But I'm
Speaker 1: more concerned about the number of women who already suffer migraines,
Speaker 1: and I think that if you are one of those women,
Speaker 1: you should maybe try some of the tips we tried,
Speaker 1: and also find out more information about pains in the
Speaker 1: brain on how stuff works dot com for moralns and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics because it has stuff works dot
Speaker 1: Com