Migraines 101

Recently, I've been complaining to everyone around me about my Monday headaches. I trace them back to last summer when I first started instructing my hour-long spin class on Mondays. The drill is always the same: teach cycle from 11:45-12:45, do a weight lifting workout of my own for 30 minutes, chug a protein shake and take a shower, then train 6 clients back to back and go home. I normally feel the headaches coming on around 3:00, and they escalate from mild to severe by the time I'm driving home. Twice I would have classified them as migraines, where the second I got home, I would have to lie in a cold dark room with my head under a pillow. Lights seemed almost blinding, a simple phone conversation felt like something blaring into my ear, and even though I knew I should eat some dinner, I was too nauseous. I've tried all combinations of drinking extra water on top of my normal large quantity, in case it was dehydration, or trying to eat sooner after my workout, in case it was brought on by low blood sugar, but nothing seemed to work.

So, perfect timing, we recently invited Dr. Jay Bhatt, a neurologist in Indy, to do a Migraine Lunch & Learn at work. I stayed after to talk to him about my specific problem, knowing ahead of time I wasn't going to get a rocket science kind of response. He seemed to think it was simply the placement in that I have my busiest work day and also most physically demanding day on Monday...the first day back after a long relaxing weekend. He said often people get migraines on Monday morning, because they had to get up early after 2 days of sleeping in--but the reverse is also true, that he sees people whose migraines are triggered on Saturday mornings because they got MORE sleep than usual. Basically anything out of routine can spark a bad headache, especially when migraines run in the family--my mom's migraines were notoriously bad until she discovered Imitrex 2 years ago.

Since I don't really have the option of moving my spin class, and I don't have many other open spots for my Monday clients to switch to, Dr. Bhatt suggested the best thing to do is to pre-medicate on Monday morning before the headache even has a chance to strike, and then find as many opportunities as I can to just pause throughout the day and breathe...all I could think of was www.donothingfor2minutes.com!!