For the past few days, I’ve woken up FULL of energy before the alarm has gone off. I’ve stayed up later too, enjoying a good book or a discussion with my housemate well past my usual bedtime. I’m concentrating on my work and getting a lot more done. I feel happy and optimistic and I’m looking at my goals thinking, “I can achieve those!” And all because of my migraines.
For the last few weeks, my migraines have been horrendous. I can’t count the amount of pills I’ve had to take or the number of social events I’ve had to cancel. One word springs to mind: debilitating. My migraines have been well and truly debilitating.
I think when life presents us with an obstacle like that – in my case, my migraines – we have two choices. We can lie down in front of the obstacle, accept that it’s there and allow it to stop us going forward in life. Or we can search for ways to get over it – or around it.
A couple of weeks ago, I was at a conference at Oxford University about loneliness. At breakfast, I had found myself sitting next to a lovely and very interesting man who was horrified that I put sugar on my cornflakes.
“You should give up refined sugar,” he told me. “It’s very bad for you.”
Later, we found ourselves together on the train. The trolley bar came through the carriage. He asked if they had any fruit. He was offered chocolate and biscuits. He declined. He wouldn’t, he told me, have anything with sugar in. He said he felt miles better since he’d started this regime and had loads of energy.
“I wonder if it would help my migraine,” I pondered. He seemed to think that it might, and given that he worked in the medical field, I wondered if I should give it a try.
The next weekend, I had to cancel all my plans after a severe migraine and I decided I’d had enough. I thought I’d investigated every cure, every possible cause, every potential alternative therapy. Could there be any truth in what the man had said about refined sugar?
A few searches on the internet revealed some interesting possibilities. I ordered a book off Amazon, written by a biochemist and fellow migraine sufferer who was convinced there was. I ordered the book.
The book made convincing reading. It seemed that giving up all refined sugar really might help my migraines. It was worth a try.
After only a few days of having no sugar and eating something every 2 to 3 hours, I feel loads better. I have had two headaches, but both disappeared with paracetamol and I didn’t have to stop what I was doing. And I feel better generally. I have loads more energy. Even if my migraines return, the diet has made me feel so much better that I think it’s worth sticking to.
My migraines were such an obstacle in my life, but they gave me the motivation to eat more healthily and I’m already, after only a few days, feeling better as a result. So in a strange way, I’m sort of grateful to those migraines. Though I hope I don’t encounter them again!
