Most people do not know this; a lot of people that have attacks, do not have enough fat and have too much carbohydrate. What this means essentially is that there sugar levels are not high enough. This leads to the neurotransmitters being unbalanced and eventually leads to an attack that could last up to 72 hours!
Chamomile Tea - I have heard that chamomile tea is great in helping people to relax and even sleep. I decided to try it for my migraines and found that it also helped to lessen the pain that I was feeling. I drank a cup of hot chamomile tea at the beginning of my migraine and found that the duration and the magnitude of the pain had decreased in comparison to other migraine attacks that I have had.
A cold wash cloth - I know that some of you may wonder why something as simple as this could actually help with these terrible headaches that debilitate so many people every year. Well, this helps with one of the symptoms of the migraine headache, and that is nausea and vomiting. When I feel nauseated, I take a cold wash cloth and place it either over my forehead and eyes (which also helps with light sensitivity) or on the back of my neck. Every time I have done this, I find that my nausea lessens, and my chances of vomiting diminish greatly.
Meditation - I have always tried to use meditation to help me deal with my daily stress. I never thought about using it to help with my migraines. Yet, the truth be told some of my migraines have stress-related causes. What I have started doing now is to listen to soothing music in a dark room and take slow deep breaths until I can feel my body relax. This also helps to take my mind off of things that may be causing the stress and the migraine. I have found that this helps to shorten the duration of my migraines a good deal.
Simple. Migraines cannot be cured. Crude? Yes. But you will have to face the truth and live with it. Migraines can be controlled and treated naturally thought, by modifying your own behaviour. In fact, migraines are triggered by various human factors like lack of exercise, stress, bad food etc. By cornering your own migraine causes, you will easily get rid of your migraines by simply avoiding some bad habits. Really, your best migraine non-prescription treatment is changing the way you live.
Smoking: Decreases oxygen and introduces chemicals into the bloodstream.
Certain Foods: Chocolate, monosodium glutamate (MSG), nuts, alcohol, cheese, are known irritants to migraine-sensitive people.
Erratic Meals: Eating on the run, missing meals, going without food for long periods of time can cause a shift in these brain chemicals.
Dehydration: Your brain is about 80% water. Dehydration can trigger a migraine.
Erratic Sleep Patterns: Not sleeping enough, or too much, can disrupt brain chemicals.
Hormone Fluctuations: Monthly hormonal shifts of estrogen and progesterone in women can trigger brain chemical imbalances.
Stress: Especially if chronic, can lead to all kinds of chemical imbalances in the body that can have a domino effect, i.e., one causes the other.
Sensory, Environmental Stimulants: Bright sunlight, bright colors, blinking lights, strong unpleasant smells, loud, pounding beat music, altitude and weather changes.
Certain Illnesses: Epilepsy, abnormal cholesterol levels, depression/anxiety, Tourette syndrome, hereditary tumors, stroke, certain eye diseases, inner ear/balance problems.
Relaxation
With jobs becoming harder to find and wages stationery, but inflation increasing, it seems that our lives consistently get busier by the day. Of course, it is our bodies that take the full strain of this busy life style, and they need to relax!
Things such as reading, walking in the fresh air or simply taking 10 minutes out of a day for yourself can be great ways to relax and reduce the amount of stress and therefore the likelihood of an attack!
Sticking to a diet
This is not necessarily losing weight and junking all the nice foods we eat, but controlling your lifestyle. Certain fatty or rich foods can trigger a migraine, which is certainly not going to help with instant migraine relief.
Try to avoid fatty foods and lots of alcohol for instance, as they are known to be triggers of attacks.
Preparation for an attack
If you prepare your body for the worst attack ever, you will always be prepared. If you are looking for instant migraine relief, then you need to look at what you can do to combat the attack and get everything into place and ready for the times it happens.
Try different things
Most people are afraid to try new things; do not be! There are plenty of solutions for attacks, but you need to be prepared to try them. Things like medication from doctors, natural remedies and relaxation techniques are all great ways to combat your attacks.
Eye care
Suffering from migraines is a lot to do with vision. Ensuring that you do not need any glasses or contact lenses is probably the first thing to do. After that, try to reduce the amount of time you append watching TV or on the computer.
Keeping a diary of events
Every time you have an attack, there is likely to be a reason. By noting down the events before the attack you will find the problem and exactly what is triggering your migraine. Usually this will help you achieve instant migraine relief in the near future.
I suffer from migraines. I am one of the fortunate people that can take over-the-counter meds for migraines to relieve my pain. Of course, I have only found one that works and even then, sometimes it doesn't always take the migraine pain away, but dulls it instead. My husband found a website that had isochronic downloads.
As he was browsing the site, he noticed they had a download for headaches. It was about a week later that I had a migraine. I didn't know he had purchased this isochronic tone for headaches, but he made me sit and listen. I was skeptical about whether or not this would work, but being the good wife that I am, I tried it just to humor him. I hadn't taken any pain reliever yet, but I felt I could listen to the tones and still have time to take the meds before the pain got out of control.
I was amazed that after listening to the download just once, the tones reduce the pain of my migraine by half. I was so impressed with the initial results that I listened to the download again. By the end of the second time, my migraine pain was gone. We returned to the site and purchased a few more downloads, one of them being for pain as we both occasionally have backaches, pinched nerves, and other aches and pains due to age.