I have chronic migraine and I've been reading about TMS. It does seem like many migraine sufferers find relief but I have a lot of doubts. I can see this applying to bodily pain that becomes chronic long after an injury has healed but in most cases migraine never has a physical cause as its a neurological diseasae, they have isolated genes which cause them.
I do understand that everytime you get a migraine the pattern of migraine is reinforced and that your brain basically learns to become more sensative to any trigger and it takes less and less to trigger a migraine. I don't understand though how tms recovery helps stop this? In my experiance if my pain level is low my migraine will seem a little better if I do tracking, or eft tapping or some meditation but it will always very quickly return to its former pain level and then get worse and worse unless I take my triptan medication. If my migraine is severe then I do not get any benefit from these sort of exercises and can't even focus on them to do them properly. My triptan medications is effective for me but I only have 12 tablets a month and my pain is everyday. I feel like the exercise aren't really that goodif they only help for 5 or 10 minutes and don't fully stop the attack because if I have to take my medication later that day anyway my issue remains that I don't have enough medication for all my attacks and I've wasted a day hoping my pain will resolve with tms exercises and I've still had to use a triptan. If I just leave my migraine like if I run out of medication before I get my refill I will just have a migraine of varying intensity for the full time until I get a new triptan. I once went this way over two weeks. Painkillers do not do anything for my pain.
I can relate to some of the personality type I do have low self esteem and when I was younger I was a perfectionist (not so much anymore) and I can pin point some unhappiness in my childhood but I've had therapy in the past and worked thought a lot of that. I am not depressed and when I don't have a migraine I am a pretty happy, laid back person. I don't work, have little pressure on me, no kids by choice. I only get frustrated by having so many migrianes and i feel sad at times my life is so limited by my pain. They come on whatever I do, most often when I am asleep so I'm not thinking anything when I have them I just wake up in pain. Sometimes I get a week where I don't have any migraine (not for a while now) and when that happens I feel so happy and I forget about migraine altogether but eventually I always have one and then they come everyday.
I want this to work for me as I've tried everything and nothing works. My neurologist says I just have a heavy load of migraine genetics and I do have a family history of migraine. I can believe that emotional factors and neural pathway pain can contribute to migraine and the chronification of the disease but I can't see how these exercises can stop an acute attack and in my experiance they cannot and that seems to be a big drawback to this method. My pain is so severe and its not possible for me to just carry on normally pretending it doesn't exisit. I know the migraine will not kill me, I know its just a pain response caused by a neurological cascade, I'm not afraid I'll die, I know it will eventually pass of it but that doesn't make the pain any less.
Note: I've also read that TMS theory suggests that the pain is caused by vasoconstriction caused by negative emotions but migraine pain is due to vasodilation and the triptans treat this by causing vasoconstriction, this seems like a contradiction?
I do understand that everytime you get a migraine the pattern of migraine is reinforced and that your brain basically learns to become more sensative to any trigger and it takes less and less to trigger a migraine. I don't understand though how tms recovery helps stop this? In my experiance if my pain level is low my migraine will seem a little better if I do tracking, or eft tapping or some meditation but it will always very quickly return to its former pain level and then get worse and worse unless I take my triptan medication. If my migraine is severe then I do not get any benefit from these sort of exercises and can't even focus on them to do them properly. My triptan medications is effective for me but I only have 12 tablets a month and my pain is everyday. I feel like the exercise aren't really that goodif they only help for 5 or 10 minutes and don't fully stop the attack because if I have to take my medication later that day anyway my issue remains that I don't have enough medication for all my attacks and I've wasted a day hoping my pain will resolve with tms exercises and I've still had to use a triptan. If I just leave my migraine like if I run out of medication before I get my refill I will just have a migraine of varying intensity for the full time until I get a new triptan. I once went this way over two weeks. Painkillers do not do anything for my pain.
I can relate to some of the personality type I do have low self esteem and when I was younger I was a perfectionist (not so much anymore) and I can pin point some unhappiness in my childhood but I've had therapy in the past and worked thought a lot of that. I am not depressed and when I don't have a migraine I am a pretty happy, laid back person. I don't work, have little pressure on me, no kids by choice. I only get frustrated by having so many migrianes and i feel sad at times my life is so limited by my pain. They come on whatever I do, most often when I am asleep so I'm not thinking anything when I have them I just wake up in pain. Sometimes I get a week where I don't have any migraine (not for a while now) and when that happens I feel so happy and I forget about migraine altogether but eventually I always have one and then they come everyday.
I want this to work for me as I've tried everything and nothing works. My neurologist says I just have a heavy load of migraine genetics and I do have a family history of migraine. I can believe that emotional factors and neural pathway pain can contribute to migraine and the chronification of the disease but I can't see how these exercises can stop an acute attack and in my experiance they cannot and that seems to be a big drawback to this method. My pain is so severe and its not possible for me to just carry on normally pretending it doesn't exisit. I know the migraine will not kill me, I know its just a pain response caused by a neurological cascade, I'm not afraid I'll die, I know it will eventually pass of it but that doesn't make the pain any less.
Note: I've also read that TMS theory suggests that the pain is caused by vasoconstriction caused by negative emotions but migraine pain is due to vasodilation and the triptans treat this by causing vasoconstriction, this seems like a contradiction?
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