How do you deal with migraines? That last for days, are you too sensitive to light and sick of pain? Provided the pills don't work.

Here's some great advice about Sachs - it's worth listening.

Try to go to bed and fall asleep and as little irritation as possible around. Get tested and look for reasons in any case. You need a good, intelligent neurologist, you will have to change many and choose the best one.

1. I put my head under cool water. This gives 30-45 minutes of headache-free working time. Then I repeat.

2. If it is day outside, then sunglasses.

3. If you need to go somewhere / go - then not on foot. Either public transport or taxi. Less fuss, less pain.

4. Neck massage. On your own or ask someone close to you. Gives about 15-20 minutes of freedom after massage.

You are not taking the pills. Try triptans (eletriptan, zolmitriptan). I suffer from good old hormonal (aka mestrual migraines) and had to endure 48 hour seizures every month until - lo and behold - I was prescribed triptans. The mechanism of migraine headaches itself is quite simple - at first the vessels narrow sharply, and then expand and freeze in this state for n-hours - and welcome to the "migraine status". The most reliable explanation for why this happens at all is a violation of serotonin metabolism. Triptans are agonists (stimulants) of serotonin receptors that cause the release of serotonin and, as a result, vasoconstriction and relief of an attack. The thing itself is quite lethal, tends to sleep, has a number of side effects, is contraindicated for other types of headache (risk of stroke) and therefore only on prescription after examination. But it really saves.

I need to get tested. It doesn't happen that "pills don't help". Find the cause, from hormone imbalance, deficiency of a number of vitamins to episyndrome and choose a medicine. In extreme cases, call an ambulance, they will make diazepam, it will definitely remove, if it is really a migraine.

Oliver Sachs, an excellent neuropsychologist and popularizer of science, has a book called Migraine.

It, like his other books, is based both on his personal experience as a patient, and on his personal experience as a doctor, and on the results of research and world topical (for 1970) and historical practices.

And this book has done more for me to understand my migraines than doctors and medicines. First of all, it helped to learn to recognize the primary signs and triggers for an attack. In addition, I found that I did not recognize some of the attacks as migraines at all and considered them something else.

The conclusion that Sachs makes at the end is not the most reassuring. If the attack has already occurred, nothing but rest, lack of light and a certain set of foods (which migraine sufferers find themselves empirically quite quickly) can significantly help.

There is no such thing as "pills do not help". There is a concept of "not understanding the causes" of a headache. There are migraines, tension headaches, high blood pressure, intracranial pressure, psychosomatic pains, spasms, phantom pains, epileptoid pains, pain associated with other somatic diseases. And there is a cure for everything. Ideally, you need to find out why your head hurts, diagnose and treat either a symptom (pain) or the cause of the disease.

But if you can't or don't want to, then you need not be lazy, not disdain with pills, but choose yourself a helping remedy and finally live peacefully, so as not to waste the days and weeks that fall out of life due to headaches. I have been living with hereditary frequent migraines for 20 years. Thank you, lucky: just an old analgin helps well, and in case of weather exacerbations - noshpa. But anyone can try. Analgin does not help - it means noshpa. Not noshpa - so spazmalgon, pentalgin, nurofen, citramone, ibuprofen, solpadein, ketorol, dexalgin. Quite killer from non-prescription - nise, advil, trigan. You just need to find yours empirically.