Migraine is considered to be one of the most dreadful pain-causing ailments.
What is Migraine?
A migraine in simple layman’s terms is called a headache. But in reality, it is way more dreadful and complex in nature than a simple headache that we have experienced at some point of time in our lives. Classically migraine is called a partial headache or “अर्धशिशी” (ardhashish)i.
The question most people have when they have a headache is, is my brain that is giving me those painful symptoms? One thing that is assuring is that although some brain cancers or tumors also tend to give severe headaches but in most cases the headaches or migraines are just not related to the brain as the brain itself doesn’t have the pain receptors that lead to severe throbbing pain. Nevertheless, since the brain is the central processing unit of the body(CPU of the body) any sort of ailment irrespective of the origin can overwhelm the brain and can cause a headache. Having said so that doesn’t imply the classic partial headache which is termed as migraine.
Migraine is a very complex term to define as it has many aspects that may vary from person to person. In simple terms, it’s still a headache only this its cause or place of origin is unknown to modern science. Lucky for us the ancient wisdom of TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) and also Ayurveda has been able to point out the probable causes of this mysterious disorder and we are able to treat these root causes of headaches and help patients recover from their suffering.
What are the cause of Migraines?
In the modern day we engage ourselves in innumerable activities and habits which makes it very hard to pinpoint the cause of migraine in each individual precisely but we can categorize them in simple ways as below:
Food habits :
As Chinese medicine rightly points out “病从口入“ which literally translates as the disease enters through the mouth, migraine is one such disease that finds its way into our body and terrorizes our very life through food habits. As we know from various sources our body is not designed to be vegetarian. Also in our previous blog, we have mentioned how different people belonging to different sects and varna of society and performing different duties have to adopt particular eating habits. There is a controversial viewpoint about the same that we also can eat non-vegetarian food as we also have the ability to digest it and have been doing so for years. Nevertheless, these are based on the body types and conditions.
Not everyone is able to afford the luxury of consumption of heavy meat and fish without any bad effects. Food that harms your body and causes headaches not necessarily be meat-based and non-vegetarian. Other products such as mushrooms, roasted cashew nuts, and deep-fried oily and spicy food are also some of the major factors leading to aggravating migraine. In short, any food that has high energy(unwanted heat or pitta energy) can lead to migraine. Blood is there most important component in our body that circulates nourishes and heals every part of our body. This blood for its proper circulation requires thinner viscosity. Any food especially a meat-based diet causes the blood to become thick in nature as is the nature of meat. Hindering the circulation in various parts of the body, especially the head. In Chinese medicine stagnation or hindered flow of qi and blood is the cause of pain.
Water consumption :
Water is a natural healer. On average, a 5.6’ person with a proper physique requires approximately 2-3 liters of water daily. Without proper intake of water, the metabolism process slows down leading to the accumulation of waste energy in our body which is a major cause of stagnation and pain. During a day’s work when we strain ourselves in front of computers and mobile screens the head like a CPU heats up causing blood and a toxic rush in the head. This rush of unwanted energy needs to be neutralized. Water consumed during the day serves the purpose of cooling this overheated system. As we know a car engine produces a massive amount of heat to create the propelling force and to control that heat from exploding the engine a radiator with a fan and coolant is placed in front of it similarly our body also uses water and air we breathe to cool this overheating.
Today’s way of working late at night and overtime spent on the computer is causing this heat to cause severe health issues and one of them is migraine. Many of us often experience headaches near our eyes and forehead and also many time feels like our eyes are about to burst. These are signs of migraine caused by either fatigue and not enough water in the body to clear overheating or overstraining of the eyes. In either case, water is the elixir, and without it, it is very hard to recover.
Sleep cycle :
Like any computer for our Brain to function properly its most essential to shut down and restart. Sleeping properly during nighttime is like a shutdown process and a quick nap during the day is like a restart. During the night time when our conscious mind is asleep, our subconscious mind takes up the most important and essential task of repair and maintenance of the body which during the day becomes difficult to attain. According to the Organ Clock theory of TCM our deep sleep should be between 11 pm till 3 am. which implies that we must be on our bed ready to sleep by 10 pm. Switching off all sorts of stimuli an hour before hitting off to the bed. If we are unable to do so then we tend to put our brain into hibernate mode rather than shut down. The body is unable to rest completely and recover from the daily accumulated toxic.
Our liver and Gall bladder take the utmost important task of detoxing our Body of chemicals we commonly refer to as pitta or 血毒(xue du) this filtering and cleaning are possible during the time of night from 11 to 3 when the energy of the body is maximum in these two Channels and our eyes are shut. If we are unable to shut down and sleep properly during these hours especially due to our night-mode lifestyle, This toxic blood is unable to purify, and the same is circulated in our body the next day. Leading to severe problems like migraine. Improper sleep is one of the major reasons for the onset and aggravation of migraine attacks. Irrespective of sleeping hours if sleep is not attained during those 4 hours the body is unable to recover no matter how many hours you sleep after that.
Stress and Overexertion :
another common cause of migraine that is most commonly seen in recent decades is Stress. Most people who are stressed with work or social pressure are often experiencing a severe migraine and heavy head mostly in the frontal part of the head (forehead) or shooting pain in the apex of the head. Later is mostly associated with over-exertion under stressful conditions. Stress headaches often exhibit a peculiar complete headache in which the patient experience is similar to the fullness feeling occurring during wearing a tight bike helmet. In these both situations it’s most advisable to take as much as rest possible to relieve and relax the nerves straining during work.
Stress is a pressure caused by mainly two phenomena. One is lack of space (more of mental space) second is lack of time. These two are the key factors associated with creating stress which tends to stagnate the energy responsible for the smooth flow of thoughts. This stagnation of energy causes the Braoin circuit to overload and cause irregular nerve firing and painful headaches.
“Knowing the cause of your stress is like winning half the battle. “
When we see time as a constraining entity like “I have only ‘ 1 hour’ to complete this task” your whole spiritual energy is squeezed like a lemon while the same one hour if viewed as “Oh I have 60 minutes to complete it and if I relax I even have 3600 sec”. Just this simple thought makes time relative. The same thing goes for space. When we feel our mind is constricted but the concrete jungle we live in, and the small office spaces we work in we start to feel stress. The best way to deal with this is to move out in an open space or jungle which is practically impossible! so a simple solution is to expand the space in our minds beyond our concrete walls. Sounds impossible? It’s difficult at the beginning but not impossible.
Sit in a closed room for a while and you will experience the walls of the room closing on you. Like they are pressuring you. And when you feel like that if you right that time open a door or move out into an open space you will notice that very feeling disappears. If your mind is able to create this illusion and make you feel it as a reality, why can’t we hack into this same illusion at will and visualize ourselves working on the beach? Everything is possible if you put your mind to it!
Different types of headaches and their symptoms:
In simple terms, headaches can be classified based on their locations and the type of pain it inflicts. These classifications are not based on modern science classification but on TCM.
- Temporal Headache: In Chinese medicine, they are called Shaoyang Headaches. These mainly occur on the sides of the head over and near the temporal lobe. These headaches mainly are the classic cases of migraine headaches. The nature of pain is mainly a shooting pain occurring from the neck region to the sides of the eyebrows. Cervical slip-disc or spondylosis is one of the main causes of these headaches apart from the above-mentioned causes. Wind or cold wind is one of the main triggering factors in causing the migraine attack. Gusts of wind while riding on a bike, or direct breeze from a speeding fan or air conditioner can also cause this pain. The best way to prevent this kind of migraine attack is to avoid direct wind to the head region.
- Frontal Headache: According to TCM this type of headache is called Yangming headache. Frontal headaches mainly cause severe pain in the forehead region or near the sinuses. Gastric problems like indigestion or hyperacidity or constipation are the leading causes of these types of headaches. These are the least common type of migraine. Most people don’t consider frontal headaches as migraine but these are common types of headache. Solve your digestive problems and most of these will be solved. Never apply balm on your forehead and sleep under a fan or cold air conditioning as it might aggravate the symptoms in the future.
- Occipital Headache: TCM terms such as headache and Taiyang Headache. The main reason for the occurrence of such headaches is the direct effect of a cold gust of wind or breeze. Most of the time we tend to sit in a setting where the air conditioner is directly behind our head or in front and is set at a very low temperature, also in a car when the air vents are directly facing your head. This type of migraine headache is easy to identify with severe throbbing pain at the back of the head. The pain also increases as we rest our heads on a support or bed. Along with occipital pain patients also exhibit severe deep pain on the inner sides of their eyes. The best way to prevent such headaches is to avoid direct cold wind as much as possible. A very important note on pain caused by a cold wind is that cold always accumulates before it starts to show its symptoms. So even though you may not seem to realize it at the beginning but as the body starts to get weak and the immune system depletes it starts to show its symptoms and in severe cases even a mild cold breeze will cause severe throbbing migraine.
- Parietal Headache: In TCM it’s called a Jueyin headache which affects the top of the head. People with this type of headache experience shooting pain at the top of the head and sometimes feel the source of the pain is deep inside the head. This type of headache is mainly associated with an imbalance occurring in the energy of the liver causing an eruption of unstable excess Qi traveling upward. Such headaches are hard to prevent if our emotions and diet are not under control.
- Complete headache: this type of headache fall under either Shaoyin headache or Daimai headache. Hard to pinpoint the exact location of the pain it feels like the entire head is experiencing a heavy tightness kind of pain. Patients may even feel suffocated with such a headache as it feels stress. It’s a very rare case of headache when the overall energy of the body has fallen below a certain level and it’s hard to maintain basic brain function.
- Mobile headache: In very severe conditions when many of the above symptoms occur simultaneously hard to pinpoint the exact location of the headache as the pain keeps shifting everywhere. This kind of headache is mainly caused by a specific type of condition called internal wind. Which is again a severe imbalance between Gall Bladder and the Liver. In Ayurveda, it can be termed a vatta headache. Another kind of person who experiences such headache are females who have an anemic body or deficiency of blood and Qi. For such females, a headache occurs mainly during the menstrual cycle as the loss of blood can cause a deficiency of energy in the head leading to unbearable throbbing pain and becoming sensitive to light sound and other such stimuli.
| Temporal Headache | Shao Yang Headache | Caused by wind or neck problems. |
| Frontal Headache | Yang Ming Headache | Caused by Gastric problems like indigestion or hyperacidity or constipation |
| Occupation Headache | Tai Yang Headache | Caused by a cold gust of wind or breeze. |
| Parietal Headaches | Jue Yin Headache | Caused by emotional imbalance stress or diet |
| Complete Headache | Shao Yin or Dai Mai Headache | Caused by a low level of basic energy life force. |
| Mobile Headache | Nei Feng Headache | Caused by internal wind due to qi and blood weakness |
Signs and symptoms of Migraine:
Migraine in general have same symptoms of common headache. If sign and symptoms as mentioned above keep recurring in a pattern of time and location repeatedly with increasing severity it can be termed as migraine. Most of the common headaches with time turns into partial headache or migraine with affected areas becoming worse with time with respect to pain and suffering.
How does a common headache becomes chronic migraine ?
In most cases it starts with a simple headache a small amount of pain to begin with and if we choose to rest and recuperate with proper mild diet it fades away and if we take care of the causes mentioned it may not reccur. But in reality specially due to out fast growing lifestyle we choose a simple yet a deadly alternate to stop that pain hindering use from continue our on going stressful work. So we choose to pop a painkiller and the viscous cycle of migraine starts. Every time you have an headache and you choose to take a pain killer all it does is just stops the pain but the cause of pain still persists and t make it worse it actually magnifies due to improper treatment
So next time that same dose of painkiller has minimum to no effect. So stronger and stronger doses are taken till one day the situation is out of control and whole system is on verge of collapse. As every painkiller we take being a false relief it just stops the pain stimulus but not the ailment. The energy imbalance which led to the headache still persist. On contrary to treating the pain it makes it worse as every painkiller has severe effect of liver and kidney as those two organs take up the task of metabolising and eliminating that toxic chemical out of our system and hence they have severe repercussions. As mentioned earlier major part of our migraine is caused by imbalance in these organs itself.
Treatment of migraine:
Migraine is a very complex disorder. The root of the problem is deeper than just simple symptoms it exhibits.
- Allopathy Medications: The most common course of action is to prescribe painkillers. Painkillers like very other medicine has very severe side effects as mentions above. And not only they worse the condition in later stages but damage other organs and lead to onset of many other unwelcome illness. A famous personality Dr. B M Hegde once said, ”There is no pill for every ill, but there is an ill following every pill”. Painkillers although provide fast relief of symptoms but its not the right solution.
- Ayurvedic treatment: Ayurvedic medicines if prescribed by an expert may have very good effect on the headaches but again it depends on the cause of the headache and in some cases when the cause is deeper the medicine doesn’t have enough potency to cause a complete elimination of root of the problem. If the physician doesn’t properly diagnose the root cause of the problem and prescribe medicine then it might have severe repercussions.
- Homeopathic treatment: Homeopathic medicines are similar to allopathic medicines. Although it is obtained from natural sources must not be mistaken for herbs. Homeopathy is a treatment of “killing poison with poison” thorough examination is required to understand the right medicine and dose to be administered for a particular patient or there are high chances of having bad side effects.
- Acupuncture treatment: As far as chronic or acute migraine is concerned the best course of action is something that has a completely inside out approach of treating the root cause of the problem without side effects. Acupuncture being a natural way of healing the body through restoring the balance of energies without any external administration of drugs or herbs, it is the most safest way to completely eliminate migraine headaches from root cause. As acupuncture aims at treating root cause and not just eliminating symptoms of the disease it takes longer time to treat chronic migraine. But once treated in majority of cases the migraine doesn’t relapse provide patient maintains a healthy lifestyle.
Conclusion:
Irrespective of the choice of treatment most crucial part of treatment of migraine is the prevention. Once you are aware of the causes of migraine it is easier for you to avoid those and stop the attack before it begins. But in cases of very severe chronic migraine its best to seek Acupuncture treatment and patiently get treated from root cause.
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