[Update 2012/06/12 - I just had another prodrome and started the treatment below within a minute. I had a thermometer and the water temperature was 117°F. I held that water in my mouth, spitting it out and resupplying the hot water every 15 seconds. The flashing was less than usual and gone in 10 minutes. Next time I will try holding ice water in my mouth.]
Last month I read an article about pain and some brain experiments which showed the arteries expanded when a person’s mouth was subjected to painfully ice cold water. They claimed the cold-pain in the mouth caused the head pain which was usually associated with drinking a milkshake too fast. I doubt their experiment because I can have that particular form of head pain for half a minute after drinking the cold substance and it is no longer in my mouth. However, in that situation I can cure ice in my stomach pain by standing up and rotating quickly which sloshes the ice around in my stomach and makes the pain go away. However, this article did get me to thinking about dilating and contracting arteries in the brain, and comparing it to the published brain research that migraines are caused by faulty blood flow in the visual centers at the back of the brain. My blog post on my migraine research last month ended with, “I may be weird, but: I am looking forward to some prodromes so I can do some new experiments.”
An hour ago I finally had another migraine prodrome and had the chance to try out the new technique. It was considered only a possibility at that time – but now with a single experiment the prodrome was gone in about a minute. You really don’t need all of the background links posted down below because my experiment was so very simple and totally safe.
how I cured my migraine prodrome in a couple of minutes.
I drew water out of the hot-water tap until there was a large glass of water that was just hot enough that I could hold my finger in it without any pain. That was probably about 106°F, but I didn’t measure it. Next time I will do this experiment more scientifically. This water was quite warm but perfectly drinkable without any pain. After drinking about half a cup of the warm water, to warm my stomach, I held the next mouthful in my mouth for about fifteen seconds before swallowing and then took another mouthful and held it. Not needing more water, I spit it into the sink in fifteen seconds and immediately took another gulp of warm water into my mouth. My entire mouth was quite warm, but not painfully. I repeated this several times and after a minute or two the migraine prodrome was nearly gone and in another couple of minutes it was totally gone. That was the shortest migraine prodrome I have ever had. A couple of years ago, before I started doing various experiments they generally lasted about an hour.
Before I started the warm water treatment I had been doing about fifteen seconds of the CO2 breathing into my cupped hands and maybe fifteen seconds of strong finger tapping on the back of my head.
Previous Probaway posts on migraine
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What is migraine effect on headache and eye pain?
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A migraine prodrome aura cure with a strange eye exercise.
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Experiments with your eyes and brain #5
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Fun experiments with your eyes
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Migraine cure – an aura event appeared to respond to an ice pack and tapping.
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What you can do about pain.
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Migraine and ice-cold-headache compared in brain research
This experiment is 100% personal experience and you should consider it totally a first test and nothing more. But, it worked for me and I very much would like to know if it works for anyone else. I only get migraine prodromes every couple of months so it may be a long wait before I get to do the experiment myself again.
About ten percent of people get migraine prodromes at some point in their lives and so if this cure really works it will eventually be helpful to billions of people.
Thanks for your posts. I’ve tried your ice pack to the back of the head method with my last 3 prodromes (the last of which was today), and it didn’t seem to have any effect on the duration (usually 30 min). Keeping my eyes shut and focusing on the cold did seem to make it all a bit more bearable, though, as I didn’t experience the nausea usually associated with having the aura.
My migraines typically come in pairs, and usually happen a day apart, so I’m looking forward (well, you know what I mean) to the next one as I intend on trying the warm water method outlined in the above post.
Question: Did you still experience a migraine after the shortened (one minute!) prodrome?
Fortunately I usually don’t get the headache, but usually just an unpleasant spacy feeling for an hour after the flashing migrates to the outside and evaporates into a grey mist. The time on yesterday’s prodrome was about five minutes. I say about because it is just a bit difficult telling exactly when to start counting the time and when to stop. In any case it was within ten minutes no matter how I measured it, which is much better than the full hour I experience in the bad old days. Please let me know if holding hot water (not quite painfully hot) changes anything. I have been considering holding ice-water in my mouth to see if that would change anything. The migraine is apparently caused by a mal-flow of blood through the visual centers and it is known that pain in the mouth can cause a change in the dilation of the blood vessels.
I have migraine problem for more than 12 years and I used to get attacks in 3-6 times in a year. From last 2 year I am getting migraine attacks once in a month. So I consulted doctor and I came to know that is “Migraine with Aura + Headache”. Doctor gave me list of medicines to consume daily & suggested to maintain diary by recording what i had done in last 1-2 days like any change in food habit (ice-cream, cold-drinks…), sleeping patterns (not having sufficient sleep)… I started recording diary to monitor patterns, but didn’t start medicines. Also I was not aware at all it could be cure in different natural ways!!!
It is frustrating when I get such unpredictable attacks in office hours while working in front of computer. When it starts, immediately I take headache reliefe medicine (i.e. disprin). Then I suffer from 30-45 minutes visual problems and some headache (along with vomiting feelings) for 3-4 hours.
Today I got Aura attack, so immediately took medicine as usual. After 30 minutes visual problems disappeared and headache started. Anyway I was not able to work due to headache, so I was searching on internet to cure it and found wonderful articles like hot water or ice-pack therapy. In the office I tried this hot water therapy and I am feeling far better, because headache disappeared in less than 45 mintues. I am not sure, was it gone due to medicine or magic of this therapy. But I would certainly experiment this next time and share results with you.
Thanks much for sharing your experience.
Awsome. This experiment reacted greatly to my migraine aura. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
My yesterday’s experience:
- I was getting ready in the morning at home for going to office.
- Suddenly migrane aura started with visual distraction.
- I immediately tried mentioned warm water trick.
- And surprisingly I got recovered in 1-2 minutes from migraine aura visual distration effects; which most of the time lasts for 30-45 minutes in my case.
- I didn’t took any medicine this time just to see, if I get post severe headache which I get 90% of time when migraine aura occurs. Instead I just went to dark room and slept for an hour.
- When I got up, I felt my self absolutelyl normal. No headache. No vomitting feelings.
In general I used to suffer badly for minimum 4-5 hours to recover from migraine aura after taking medicine too. So I’ll prefer to try warm water trick 2-3 times to confirm consistent results.
I am just wondering – what could be scientific process, if this simple trick reacts positively to my migraine aura?
Thanks Tirthal – Your results were the same as mine. The hot water in my mouth seemed to dilate the arteries in the head and quickly return to the blood flow to my visual centers back to normal. With the normal flow of blood within a minute there was no need to take drugs. While holding the hot water in my mouth I also tapped the back of the head and neck with my fingers and messaged my neck too. The idea is to ensure the return of blood flow to normal.
Please report any success or failure. Try to write the exact time and the effects that occur, because it is very easy to forget what happened when the migraine is over. Thank you again! Charles Scamahorn
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I can’t wait to try this, although I can wait to have a migraine! I get classic migraines, with aura, visual disturbances, mental confusion,traveling numbness through one side of my body, and then finally horrible migraine headache pain.