migraine and suicide linked

not surprised at all...

Migraine, Chronic Back Pain Tied to Suicide Risk

from WebMD

By Dennis Thompson

HealthDay Reporter
People who endure chronic migraines or back pain are more likely to attempt suicide, whether or not they also suffer from depression or another psychiatric condition, according to a new study.

"Clinicians who are seeing patients with certain pain conditions should be aware they are at increased risk of suicide," said study co-author Mark Ilgen, of the Veterans Affairs Serious Mental Illness Treatment Resource and Evaluation Center in Ann Arbor, Mich.

"Although undoubtedly psychiatric factors are important, there might be aspects of the pain that in and of themselves increase a person's risk," Ilgen said. "There might be something about someone with significant pain that puts them at increased risk."

The wide-ranging study, published online May 22 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, involved more than 4.8 million people who received care from the U.S. Veterans Health Administration during fiscal year 2005. Researchers identified those suffering from chronic pain and tracked them for the next three years to see if any died from suicide.

The research team then looked for associations between suicide death -- the 10th most common cause of death in the United States -- and clinical diagnoses of chronic pain conditions, such as arthritis, back pain, migraines, neuropathy, headaches or tension headaches, fibromyalgia and psychogenic pain.

They found that all pain conditions except arthritis and neuropathy were associated with elevated suicide risk. But when they took into account the mental-health problems that chronic pain patients also had, the associations reduced for all but three types of chronic pain: back pain, migraines and psychogenic pain, which stems from psychological factors.

Dr. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, a retired Army colonel and psychiatrist living in Washington, D.C., said the study clearly reinforces the anecdotal link between pain and suicide.

"It makes sense that pain is a risk factor for suicide," she said. "Often, suicide has several different things going on, but pain can be the straw that breaks the camel's back in terms of a person's decision not to go on."

Therapists performing a suicide-risk evaluation should consider adding a question regarding pain to the standard questions aimed at suicidal thoughts and planning, she said.

"It's not a standard question: 'Are you in pain?'" Ritchie said. "I would ask, 'Are you in pain?,' or 'Is pain an issue for you?'"

Psychogenic pain increased people's risk of suicide the most, followed by migraines and back pain. Psychogenic pain is chronic pain caused or exacerbated by mental or emotional problems, and Ilgen said it is a rare and not well understood condition.

"We think that's not so much about psychogenic pain per se, but the fact that the pain itself is poorly understood and may be poorly managed," Ilgen said. "There's not a clear treatment plan for that type of pain. It's likely that patients with this type of pain may be frustrated with their care and more hopeless and more at risk for suicide."

link to rest of article:

raw

I think that I'm ready to tweak this diet some more. If I can get to a 40-50% raw food diet, that would be ideal. Right now I'm at the beginning of the beginning. Research.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and stumbling across a raw vegan brownie recipe this evening sealed the deal.

Some awesome things:

- zucchini used in place of linguine. Julienne that shit lengthways to make noodles.

- pizza crust out of coconut meat, almond pulp, tomato, garlic, flax seed meal, and basil. Whaaaaaaaat? That sounds incredible.

- there is a recipe for raw vegan lasagna and it sounds delicious and looks kind of crazy.

- my eyebrows raise higher on my head every time I read another raw recipe.

And I'll definitely be documenting it. I can't wait to try kelp noodles. I can't wait to make cinnamon oranges for desert. Man oh man. This is gonna be fun.

snapshot

(a Monday)

At the bus stop shifting my weight from foot to foot, constantly fidgeting, head leaning to the left, trying to read the book in my hands but failing. I am fighting for my composure, praying for my bus to appear. I have a migraine and I want to go home. I made it all day at work and now it's time to truly die.

Or no, maybe not death. More like I am on my way to the gallows, not yet gone. As if I'm leaving to go abroad for months or years and with each hour passing I am saying goodbye quietly to everything I know to be familiar. I am about to spill into the looking glass--this is our moment before the leap.

I look up, panicked. Someone is smoking nearby. The scent takes my head in heavy palms, cracks it in multiple places before shoving it back down on my neck. A smell that goes right to the pain and squeezes it. I try to move without making a scene. The sick part of me wants to confront the smoker but there is no use. They have no way of knowing.

And on the bus. I move seats three times on the bus just to escape triggering smells. Two are perfumes, one is stale cigarette and booze. These smells bring tears to my eyes. Life feels completely unfair. Everything in the world hurts me. I do not understand it. In my growing migraine delirium I start to assume that these people were sent to be my obstacles, life's cruel way of handing me much more than I can hold. When the truth is these are normal scents for the most part, there on a daily basis but never noticed until they become trouble. How snobbish a nose grows from well to sickness.

As the pain grows and throbs and curls and spits on the left side of my head, I try to construct descriptions. What is this pain exactly? I think of Andrew Levy's book, how exact he manages to describe attacks. At least somebody can say it. The pain is...blank space. Wherever the pain is, there's the blank. But the blank, of course, isn't blank. The blank is hot white. It is looking at the sun. It is all I know of storms, crammed into a segment of head. It is everything dark and wrong. It isn't me. It turns me into a shadow of self. The wrong side. Hence looking glass. It feels like madness--drill bits, canker sores, infection, mallets, nail beds, banjo pluck of nerve endings, the removal of balance, speech, movement. The idiot company of nausea, the clinging to things. It takes me away. It brings me back. This happens until I start to wonder which is normal. I don't understand being homesick for both.

white nailed on the wagon

Life's been good. Really good. Spring is here, and that always helps to boost the mood. And a boosted mood means less tension emotionally and physically, which means I can relax more, which means less pain. Which is a very very good thing.

I am still taking my supplements every day. Still reading the label of everything I ingest. This month I fell off track a little bit, in regards to taking care of meals myself. I get busy and/or I get home late and feel too lazy to cook meals ahead of time. This needs to change. The guilt of it is already eating at me. I haven't had a smoothie in a week. But if one falls, then one must simply get back up. So definitely starting the day off with a smoothie tomorrow.

Earlier this week I woke up with a pretty gnarly migraine. I knew I couldn't miss work--I was filling in for the receptionist and I'm out of time off for the month. At first I was really worried about getting to work, and making it through my day AND through my plans in the evening. I decided to give the whole "don't panic" thing a shot and breathed my way through the early a.m. I suited up for the ride and took the bike into work instead of the bus. The fresh air and exercise is often a wonderful help when it comes to my head pain. Blood pumping, lungs filling. It works for me. Before I hopped on the bike I took an Aleve. I drank water throughout the day and avoided all my food triggers. And I couldn't believe it: by 3pm I had shoved the pain completely out of my body.

That simply...never happens to me. If I have it, then I have it. It's hard for me to override the progression once it starts...especially if I find myself waking up with a migraine. But I did it.

I am feeling like a different person these days. I had a bunch of dead hair cut off my head and it feels pretty damn good. I've also been writing a lot these past few months...the truth is, with less migraines each week, I can get more done. It truly feels like I am blessed with extra days. I used to never have a Monday night wtihout some sort of head pain. Now, for the past 2 weeks I've been able to get out and do things on that evening. I find myself with all of this extra time and...opportunity. I can commit to social things, see people I adore, and workout every day like I want to. Less frequent pain means I have more free time, and it also means I am generally happier and less tense. My anxiety is starting to feel much more manageable. I fear these suckers so much...I'm not surprised in my new found level of calm.

My next goal is to find a therapist that I click with. I'm ready to tackle the emotional triggers. I've been in a push-me-pull-me state with it for most of my life...now I feel like I am ready to let all of it go. Getting my hair cut last weekend really triggered something in me in regards to being lighter. That lightness. I deserve it. I want it. I'm ready to fight for it and make it mine.

I have also started to reread A Brain Wider than the Sky, by Andrew Levy. I love ths book so much, more than any other text/literature written about migraines. I am maybe 3 pages in and already I have had tears in my eyes while reading. It feels like a miracle to read about this illness in a language that I can understand and relate to.

Bottom line: I am feeling less and less like an illness and more and more like a person. Someone that can function and can make plans AND take care of myself. So far so great.

update

The new diet is quickly becoming simply "my intake." The newness is fading. It is now a normal morning function--set up the blender, dump in my fruit, juice and flax seeds...fill my pill sorter with my daily intake. Some stats:

Supplements:

2 butterbur/day
2 magnesium/day
2 calcium & vitamin d/day
1 B Complex vitamin

Daily smoothie
blueberries, strawberries, orange-pineapple juice, flax seeds, cherries
(ingredients rotate depending on what I'm in the mood for)

I keep breakfast simple. Smoothie, Special K with Berries, 1 cup. Or an egg beater omelette with salsa on the weekend. I cook a lot more these days. I think it's simply par for the course when you are trying to weed out over processed foods and things like msg, corn syrup. I haven't had chinese take out since this whole thing started...at least 2 months now. I no longer miss it.

Grocery shopping continues to be quite the adventure--I read the labels of everything. No matter how much I might crave/want it, if it has too many ingredients and/or ingredients I can't pronounce, then I put it back. The one thing breaking this rule is caffeine. I vow to one day put down the soda.

I've been sleeping like a champ. If I'm having trouble, I take a melatonin and that does the trick.

I haven't had a bad migraine in about 2 weeks.

Every day I ride at least 10 miles on the bike trainer. Spin class at least once a week. Today I rode into work. As the weather warms up I'm excited for my mileage to increase as well. The hills were very easy today. Felt great.

All this to say I've found some things that work for me in terms of pain management and relief. It is not perfect, and I'm not "cured," by my goodness life has gotten so much better. Easier. I can commit to things and show up as opposed to having to cancel due to pain. I feel great about these changes and this is just the beginning.

zee cutie?

New migraine medication. This one is a battery-powered patch called Zecuity.

How the Patch Works
Named Zecuity, the battery-powered patch is manufactured by the pharmaceutical company NuPathe. About 8 inches long and 4 inches wide, it wraps around the arm or thigh much like an ace bandage. According to Bastings, it uses an electrical current to move the drug through the skin over the course of 4 hours. A small battery and computer chip regulate the charge to make sure the patient gets the right dosage.

The patch provides an alternative to pills, nasal sprays and injections. "Many migraine sufferers experience debilitating pain — sometimes so acute that they can't swallow a pill," says Bastings.

He adds that some people don't like the unpleasant taste the nasal spray can leave behind, and others are uncomfortable with injecting themselves.

That said, the patch does have some drawbacks, notes Bastings. For one thing, it's large enough that it can show when worn under short-sleeved shirts or shorts, and requires some privacy (and at times, the need to undress) to put it on. "For many people, popping a pill is a lot more immediate and simple," Bastings says.

And the patch is not without side effects: about 25 percent of subjects in the clinical study complained of a painful sensation at the patch application site. Others didn't like the reddening that most patients developed after using the patch.

that old mortal feeling

Last night the migraine arrived after much quiet knocking. At least it had the patience to wait until after work and some miles on the bike. I went to bed at 11 feeling awful, and woke up at 3am to puke. I woke up every hour til 8am doing the same thing. Puking my guts out.

I'm about to go to bed and I'm still kinda recovering--I feel a little disoriented, a little stumbly and forgetful. These things pass. Of course the real bit I'm struggling with is how I feel emotionally after being migraine free for 10 days. That is a long period of time for me. I wasn't feeling "cured" but I was feeling alive. Alive. I felt limitless, but not reckless. I can't describe that type of amazing. Obviously I feel the sting after being sick last night.

A pause here to kind of explain my migraine recovery. The first day after a migraine sucks in its own special way. Total newborn status. I'm exhausted, uncomfortable, and more often than not I am still in some pain. Emotions are pressed up to the surface. This specific kind of melancholy while the serotonin fills back up. At the same time it feels like a miracle to sit upright, to walk, to engage in a conversation. That shit feels incredibly surreal after feeling what feels like dying. But then there you are, the other side.

All this to say I'm okay with it. One migraine in ten days? That's huge. It's getting better. I'm staying steady with my diet and exercise. My butterbur arrived in the mail on Saturday so I've added that to the arsenal. Super B, magnesium, butterbur daily.

This migraine wasn't as awful as it could've been(even though throwing up so much always sucks and makes things a bit more difficult...as in ever throw up while your head is being pulled apart?). The thing that helped me the most was staying calm. I hate getting sick but knew it was going to happen. All I could do was make myself as comfortable as possible and go with it. When I couldn't get quite over the edge I would just do a neck roll and for some reason that would trigger the lurch in my stomach perfectly. I'm proud of myself for staying calm. I didn't cry and I didn't feel helpless. Today I recovered by doing what I had to do--forced myself to eat a little something, slept and slept and slept. But I didn't baby myself--as soon as I could, I got moving. The sooner I caught up with my "normalcy" the better I felt emotionally. You get up, you get back in the game. While I've always known it and believed it, that attitude is fairly new to me with this stuff. I feel much more in control since making changes. And last night's pain can't take away those 10 days. Onward.