I have been asked on several occasions to share my migraine prevention and treatment regimen, so I decided a blog post would be the simplest way to do it. This way I can share it whenever it is needed without having to retype it each time.
The summer of 2011, I had no more than eight days without debilitating migraines. They causes three strokes that summer and multiple trips to the ER and three hospital stays. My summer culminated with being transferred to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) in August for a cerebral angiogram. The heart surgeon was about to cut my chest open at Grand View, when another doctor intervened and said, “Let’s check one more thing.” I got an ambulance ride to HUP in Phila. The next day they did the angiogram. It was a grueling procedure. They saw something in my brain that they had never seen before. My adult arteries had never grown to feed my right occipital, parietal and temporal lobes. I have a single fetal artery from my spinal artery with three tiny branches off of it, one to feed each of those lobes.
I met with Dr. Scott Kasner, one of the top stroke specialists on the East Coast. He gave me a regimen to aggressively prevent migraines, since my developmental brain defect is inoperable. This regimen was developed by the Headache Center at Jefferson University Hospital, also in Philadelphia. We have made some changes since the original prescription, eventually eliminating any blood pressure medicine, as well as the Topamax (Topiramate), and adding 5mg/ daily of Atorvastatin. Where we started in 2011:
- Lisinopril, 10mg daily
- Topiramate, tapered up to 200mg twice a day
- Aspirin, 81 mg daily
- Ginger, 650mg twice daily
- Denatured Butterbur, 175mg twice a day
- Vitamin B2, 200mg twice daily
- Vitamin C, 500mg twice daily
- Magnesium, 300 to 500 mg, three times daily. (I found I absorbed Magnesium Citrate best, so lowered the dosage to 300mg)
- CoQ10 100mg three times daily
- Vitamin D3, 1000mg three times daily
- Fish Oil capsules, 300mg Omega-3, twice daily
We learned that gluten and other inflammatories can increase the incidence of migraine. Also, a low carb diet can lead to a healthier brain, and help prevent migraine. After all, your brain is fat. I had an allergic reaction to Lisinopril, so we eliminated that. After more than five years on Topiramate, I weaned myself off of that, with little increase in incidence of migraines. I take 2 ginger capsules at the onset of a migraine, followed by one every half-hour until the migraine is gone.
I also take homemade green tea capsules, morning and evening. These are not green tea extract. I believe herbs are more often best whole. I also take cinnamon morning and evening. Green tea and cinnamon fight inflammation and help regulate blood sugar. I also take turmeric with black pepper capsules. The black pepper helps activate turmeric , which is a powerful anti-inflammatory. I no longer take to Atorvastatin. I am back on Topiramate, although at a lower dose, after several TIAs this winter. I am now on 325mg aspirin due to my aortic valve replacement in June 2016.