Mygraines: Apeeling Treatments

You've surely heard a version of this joke before: a man goes to the doctor for his debilitating and persistent migraines, and after listing all of the treatments he's tried, the doctor says, "Listen, I have migraines, too...and here's what works for me. When I have a migraine, I go home, get in a nice warm bath, and have my wife sponge my forehead with the hottest water possible. Then I get out of the tub, take her into the bedroom, and even if my head is killing me, I make love to her. Almost always, the headache is immediately gone. Give it a try, and come back and see me in six weeks.” Six weeks later, the patient returns with a big grin. “Doc! I took your advice and it works! By the way - you have a really beautiful house."

Anyone who's ever had even one migraine knows that it's about as close to a trip to hell as you can get without actually expiring. And if you're in this elite group, you also know that you'd dress up like a nun and play hopscotch in front of the White House if someone told you it would get rid of your headaches.

I've done it all - the rounds of medications and shots, gallons of jasmine tea, hot water on the wrists and ankles, bursts of caffeine, vinegar compresses, and tapping (EFT) - which actually brings me a lot of relief (despite my refusal, while tapping, to repeat this affirmation: "Even though I have this migraine, I deeply and completely accept myself"). 

Ten years ago, in abject pain, I even draped a banana peel on my neck after reading that the potassium would work wonders. True to my patient nature, I gave it one try for about 10 minutes, and it didn't work. But as I sat to write this post, I thought I should at least check this out again. One source (some kind of practitioner, but not of the medical persuasion) said he had measured the electrical resistance at the site of pain in more than 18,000 people and said that he believes pain is caused by the breaking, cutting, failure, or suppression of electrical signals between cells in living tissue, so if the banana peel was able to conduct an electrical signal, it really could help. His conclusion? "Just as I thought, banana peels are excellent conductors." I got a mental picture of his lab, a Frankensteiny place with a banana skin splayed out on one gleaming silver table and a human being on another, strung together with metal, and that "zzzzzzzzzzt" sound buzzing along the wires. A little more googling got me this information from the book The Keeler Migraine Method by Robert Cowan, MD (a real doctah!). He said of his patients asking about banana peels: "Finally, I learned that the miracle [banana peel] cure had come from a bogus letter to Ann Landers... and was a complete spoof." That makes me think the nun-hopscotch-White House thing might be a fake, too. Not that I ever tried it or anything.

If you're a BMFF, I feel your pain, brothers and sisters—and I hope that, somehow, somewhere, some way, you get some blessed peace. Oh, and one more thing. Even though I wrote this post about migraines, I deeply and completely accept myself.

© 2011 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie