Breakfast? Fahgetaboutit
For those of you who aren’t keen on breakfast: no need to eat it.
I’ve never been much of a breakfast eater, even as a child. In my case it goes with not being a morning person. Over the years I’ve forced myself to eat it because it’s supposed to be A Good Thing. I would dispense with it at this point, but now I have to eat it for another reason: if I don’t, I get migraines.
Migraines are a funny thing, and not funny ha-ha. Everybody who suffers from them has his/her own basic pattern, but that pattern can change, and then change back again. Mine usually involve auras, most often of the typical visual type.
If you don’t know how that works, take a look. This isn’t exactly and precisely correct, and the aura usually takes about 25 minutes to go through its visual dance, but it’ll give you a rough idea:
About 10 years ago, I suffered an eye migraine–no headache pain, just holes in my vision, much like what one would experience with the old flashbulb photography. I made an appointment with my ophthalmologist for the next morning. I had the entire night to consider what life would be like if I lost my vision. There aren’t words to express my relief when after describing what happened, the doctor told me I had an eye migraine. I’ve had a number of them since, not too frequent and lasting about the same amount of time. My trigger appears to be bright light, especially shining off a surface. I’ve been lucky so far that pain does not accompany it.
Migraines are now known to be massively linked to the visual cortex.
They can be artificially induced by a stroboscope running at the right frequencies.
As if you would really want a pounding headache.
IIRC, (prescription) glasses with trick filters (polarized, IIRC) can drastically reduce migraines. You’ll have to seek them out, they are still not commonly available.
It would appear that strobe lighting — especially in the near ultra-violet — is able to send the visual cortex into a tizzy… what amounts to a do-loop for the organic mind. This do-loop burns out the neural net within the visual cortex — and that damage is felt as a mind shattering headache. This ties into neuro-transmitter exhaustion, and all the rest.
Once the do-loop gets rolling, the poor victim can’t shut it off.
It’s an involuntary psychic twitch.
Suppression of the near ultraviolet can do wonders for the migraine prone.
As you might imagine, medical science didn’t figure on this dynamic at all.
But, then, visual cues are STILL tossed off by medical science.
It’s still not accepted that the shift in color temperatures triggered by CFLs and LEDs are hugely responsible for the pandemic of weigh gain in the First World… the only place that has massively adopted them.
Without the daylight cues of ordinary sunlight, our hormones are shifted towards hunger — without limit.
This is why those who are up till all hours — are always gaining so much weight. No-one appreciates that the shift in visual color temperature has shifted homeostasis.
&&&
The same blindness blocks Americans out West from connecting the staggering soot emitted by Red China with the drastic shift in the climate — specifically the massive snowfalls in Alaska and the Yukon — and the lack of snowfall in the Sierras.
Alaskans have never seen anything like it. Spring floods are now beyond all human memory, and harken back to the termination of the Ice Ages.
Whereas, Californians actually think the weather gods are just going to restore normalcy next season. Not ONE expert has gone public connecting 2 + 2 to make 4.
Beijing is entirely clueless, too. None see the fallout in Alaska. (BTW, no small amount is snowing straight into the Bering Sea, too.)
Until this is reversed, California’s agriculture will slide into terminal decline. The impact is that profound.
Mother nature is lifting the same amount of moisture into the atmosphere, it’s just that Red China’s soot is causing it to snow and rain w a y up north where it can’t do anyone any good.
I live in a world run by idiots.
You don’t have to be a morning person to love breakfast. I’m not a morning person, but I eat breakfast whenever I get up, even if that is past noon, which it sometimes is! Breakfast is just the first meal of the day. Also, you don’t have to eat so-called “breakfast foods” for breakfast if you don’t want to. Eat whatever you want!
Me, too. Food Nazi. Absolutely not a morning person, but I love breakfast.
The aura and other connections of migraines to visual phenomena or stimuli are interesting. I sometimes have a thing which might be considered a mild migraine. It doesn’t incapacitate me, but it certainly keeps me from wanting to do anything at all. It includes a very bad headache, but with other symptoms, one of which I find impossible to describe–an overall sense of weakness and of being at some kind of remove from everything, including my own body. And part of that is a sense that my eyes are not quite working properly in some subtle way…. Like I said, I can’t describe it, but it certainly gives me sympathy for those who have full-blown migraines.
A co-worker of mine used to get migraines and one day she almost ran me over in the parking lot – now I know why!
My God, that must be just awful to deal with. My co-worker used to go lie down for about 30 minutes and then was better.
I think she, too, used to skip breakfast. I don’t work with her any more and I don’t know if she had the same connection. But, it is interesting to hear that you, Neo, made that connection between skipping breakfast and migraines coming on.
Charles:
There are a lot of websites that list very common triggers for migraines. Certain foods (chocolate and peanuts, for example, are triggers for me, and they are very common ones in general), as well as bright lights, erratic sleeping hours (guilty as charged), and skipping meals, are not unusual. The websites are very helpful. Through trial and error you can determine ways to help yourself, if you are subject to migraines.
Mac:
Sounds like a migraine. When my visual aura is starting, right before the light show begins, my binocular vision starts getting squirrelly. I don’t get double vision, but things just don’t quite line up right, a tiny bit like the subtle beginning of a cubist painting.
It’s hard to describe.
That video is pretty accurate, except my [rare] auras start as a point right in the foveal center of focus, and spiral outward from there, with the “scintillating sciatoma” effect shown in this video (the colored shimmering, sort of staticky). My brain, interestingly, fills in the “blanks” with whatever’s adjacent — a football player will disappear and be replaced with More Grass.
Luckily I don’t get the headache or nausea, but I do take aspirin ASAP. Just in case. Usually leaves after half an hour or so.
I am obscurely pleased to think my weird headache might be a migraine. Makes it seem more significant or something.