It happens every year like clockwork.
By April 1, Jessica Kubasak has run out of sick days at work. By New Year’ s Eve, she has 20 illness-related absences on the books.
Kubasak, a 30-year-old health care provider from California’ s San Fernando Valley, has been a migraine sufferer for more than 15 years. She says her migraines occur eight or nine times a month and last two or three days at a time— that’ s at least 384 hours worth of nausea, headaches and light sensitivity every month.
“ It tortures every part of your body,” says Kubasak, who relies on provisions in the Family and Medical Leave Act to acquire the unpaid sick days necessary to treat her condition.
Unlike most migraineurs, Kubasak isn’ t affected by common triggers, such as chocolate, citrus-packed foods or even hormonal shifts brought on by her menstrual cycle. Unfortunately, her migraine’ s accelerant— like a match to dry brush— is stress.
“ Migraines look for change and tend to get people when the boat is rocked,” says Jason Rosenberg, MD, a neurologist and director of the Johns Hopkins Headache Center at Bayview in Baltimore.“ On average, people who have very frequent headaches are suffering disproportionately from mental health issues, ranging from anxiety and PTSD to major life stressors and counterproductive coping skills.”
In several medical studies, migraine patients have reported stress as a serious trigger, often edging out missed meals, bright sunlight and weather changes as the most common precipitant. Chronic stressors, such as economic uncertainty, career difficulties and family issues, can wreak havoc on anybody, but they’ re especially tough on migraineurs, who already walk an emotional tightrope.“ The body was not created to handle that kind of stress on a regular basis,” says Kathleen Hall, PhD, noted stress expert and founder of the Stress Institute in Atlanta.
The body’ s response to stress is to reduce body temperature and dilate blood vessels, which makes patients more susceptible to other migraine triggers, according to Hall. However, by embracing a stress reduction and relaxation plan, she says migraine sufferers can impact brain function and spur the release of pain-blocking chemicals, such as serotonin, dopamine and endorphins.
Relief is possible, but it requires a coordinated plan of attack. Here are seven essential moves every migraine sufferer should master.
32 HEAD WISE | Volume 1, Issue 2 • 2011