Tag: treatment success

Chronic Migraine, Diet, Reader Stories, Treatment, Triggers

The Post I Never Thought I’d Get to Write

Kerrie Smyres

Not only do I think I’ve figured out my biggest migraine trigger, I have a way to treat it. Even better, the treatment is simple and straightforward and feels sustainable for the long-term. As an added bonus, it lets me eat peanut butter.

Here’s the gist, which may have gotten lost in the epically long post about mast cells, histamine and diamine oxidase a couple weeks ago:

  1. Whenever a person eats anything, histamine is released as part of the digestive process.
  2. An enzyme called diamine oxidase (DAO) processes the released histamine.
  3. I do not produce enough DAO (nor do many other migraineurs, according to at least one researcher).
  4. Without enough DAO, I can’t fully process normal amounts of histamine.
  5. All that unprocessed histamine is a major migraine trigger for me. (Studies suggest histamine could be a trigger for some percentage of people with migraine.)
  6. By taking a DAO supplement 10 minutes before I eat, I’ve been able to eat without getting a migraine.
  7. Histamine Block, the supplement I started this week, is much more potent and more effective than the one I was experimenting with a couple weeks ago, hence the drastic improvement. [Tons of people have asked where to buy the supplement. The name is Histamine Block and it’s available on Amazon. Click those words and you’ll get right to it.]

Despite still having constant head pain, it is sometimes as low as a level 1 and I haven’t had a real migraine since last Friday. I literally cannot remember the last time I felt as good as I have in this week.

Unsurprisingly, it has been a tremendously exciting and weird week. Multiple times, I’ve been driving with the windows down, dancing and singing at the top of my lungs, the stereo blaring so I don’t have to hear myself sing — and crying. I just can’t get over how normal life suddenly seems.

I’m so overjoyed and overwhelmed that I can’t make sense of the mass of thoughts jumbled in my mind. Could this treatment — which is so obscure as to be unheard of by the vast majority of headache specialists — really be “it”? Am I embarking on a future without daily debilitating migraine attacks? What does day-to-day life without a constant migraine even look like? Is my greatest wish actually coming true?

1/24/14: I awoke at 5 a.m. worried this post made it sound like I think I’ll never have another migraine, so here’s a clarification. I do not. I even expect they will stay chronic. My greatest wish isn’t to be pain- or migraine-free, but to not have a migraine all. the. time.

Having a migraine triggered every time I ate has probably been the greatest burden of chronic migraine for me. Figuring out something that’s contributing to that one piece of the puzzle — and having any sense of normalcy — is exhilarating.

Related posts: