Migraines and Causes

I've been relatively absent for months - close to six - due to migraines. I've run through all sorts of reasons why - dehydration, vitamin deficiency, etc., but I never expected the real answer. It was a complete shock. It put a kink in all of my plans.

So what is the cause of my migraines?

Before I get to that, I'd like to back track a little, to emphasize the seriousness of the cause of my migraines.

Back in 2007, after my desktop died, I convinced my husband to get a  decent laptop because as a writer, I would need to be able to take my work with me. So, we invested in a Dell Latitude D820.

All seemed to be fine. I spent lots of time on it. In fact, I multi-tasked by working on the laptop while watching TV programs, anime, movies, writing, etc. However, every so often I would become afflicted with migraines that would put me out of commission for days, sometimes weeks, at a time.

Medication wasn't helping, so I needed to look at other reasons for the problem.

I started by eliminating my soda and caffeine consumption. That worked in the opposite manner. I couldn't believe how bad my migraines became when I went off soda. It got to the point that I couldn't do anything, let alone read, during the time I experienced the migraines. Think one long, continuous migraine lasting at least six months.

I finally caved and started drinking soda again because the pain was just too much for me to handle on a daily basis. Since I ruled out soda as the cause of my migraines, I had to keep researching other possible causes for migraines.

Next theory - dehydration. I noticed how dry my lips have always been, not to mention having been given saline drips twice in the ER for my migraines, I made a conscious effort to reduce the amount of soda I consumed and increase the amount of water I drank.

Well, this worked...sort of. It helped to dial back the amount of pain I felt, but I still suffered regular migraines, no matter how much water I consumed. So, I went back to the drawing board.

I discovered that Vitamin B can help with migraines. So, I decided to give it a shot. I added a B-100 complex to my daily regimen. That seemed to help - or so I thought. It worked great. I stopped noticing daily migraines. In fact, I would test this by skipping doses. The migraines would return with a vengeance if I did not stick to the one pill a day. Because of this, I thought my problems were solved.

I finally felt comfortable returning to my computer usage - for about two days.

I had been offline for about two months (we'd just had the motherboard fix during this time as well), maybe three. I read a ton, felt really good. Then, hours of using the laptop, the migraine returned. I went offline for a couple of days while the migraine went away. Then, when I felt better, I went back online. Within less than an hour, the migraine returned. Basically, I determined the true cause of my migraines.

The true cause of my migraines ended up being my laptop screen.

Needless to say, this revelation wasn't taken too well since my computer is supposed to be the laptop.

Well, I needed to know if it was my laptop or computers in general, so I opted to start using the desktop. In the past couple of weeks, I managed to use the computer for multiple hours daily and the migraine hasn't really returned. Sure, I'll experience a mild headache from time to time, but since it's my full allergy season, I pretty much figure they're congestion headaches. As long as I take a Mucinex-D regularly, I don't even notice the pain.

I do admit that the B-100 complex proved to be a good addition because it does work to keep the migraines at bay and allows me to do all kinds of things without experiencing pain. However, I have to give up my laptop, and my husband has been forced to give up his desktop. I don't mind because as soon as I got my migraine pain under control, my creative muse started opening doors to new worlds to discover and eventually show to readers!