Category: Triggers
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Conditioning and pain
Ever heard of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849–1936)? He was a physiologist who did experiments with dogs. Put simply, he would ring a bell each time he served the puppies their dinner. After repeating the routine often enough, he could ring a bell, and the dogs would salivate even if there…
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“Hidden from View”
A doctor I met on LinkedIn sent me a PDF of a book suggesting it might help me with my migraines; “Hidden from view: a clinician’s guide to psychophysiologic disorders” by doctors Allan Abbass and Howard Schubiner (2018). As the title suggests, I think it was designed for people who…
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Daily persistent headaches
Today’s post is a summary of another fascinating interview from the World Migraine Summit, this time with Dr Andrew Hershey, a director of neurology at University of Cincinnati. This presentation on ‘new daily persistent headaches’ revealed (again) that headaches and migraines are complex critters (my word not theirs). There were…
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The 4 F-words of trauma
This blog post is a very high-level discussion about how people respond to trauma and is hopefully not upsetting in any way, but it IS about stressors, so you may want to give it a miss. * * * * * For a long time when I was growing up,…
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My first migraine
It occurred to me the other day that whenever we experience an event for the FIRST TIME, there is the potential for our hearts and minds to “learn” from how that event unfolded and assume that this is the “normal” way such an event ALWAYS unfolds… that we might accidentally…
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Midnight migraines
A while ago I wrote that I was pretty sure that nightmares can trigger midnight migraines… today I’m adding another unconventional culprit to the list: wearing socks to bed. Hear me out… For a few months there, one of the biggest banes of my life was midnight migraines. I was…
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Mind-messing optical illusions
Quick word of warning – today’s blog post is NOT very migraine friendly – which is so against everything I believe in… except that I do have a curious mind… If you have a migraine – come back tomorrow… this blog post could make you feel unwell… OR if visual…
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Migraine and gut health
Vince Martin, the director of a headache clinic in Cincinnati explained gut health in the 2024 World Migraine Summit earlier this year. As with some of the other presentations, I was out of my depth with the heavy science-side of things, so be sure to follow up my summary with…
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No spoons (or forks) for me…
A while ago I wrote about the history of “spoons” – the metaphor people with fibromyalgia use to explain how people with chronic pain allocate their limited amounts of energy. Today I want to go into a bit more detail to explain the idea, AND tell you why it doesn’t…
The Mindful Migraine 