😇 Remember a couple weeks ago when I sent an upbeat email boasting about my twelve heavenly days without a migraine attack (read it here if you missed it)?

⛈️ Well after that, the migraine gods were angered by my hubris and I experienced a week of relentless migraine attacks culminating in one of the worst attacks of my life.

💊 I doubled down on my triptans and naproxen, as is recommended during menstrual migraine. I was limping through the whole week.

😫 Just when I thought the flare was finally lifting, I got hit with one of my most intense attacks ever last Saturday that was not responding to any meds.

🤢 You know how it is, overwhelming head pain that brings you to your knees, then keel over and try to vomit.

So it was off to urgent care for me where I curled up in the waiting room with my head nestled down in my forearms.

My stepmom took me to urgent care, and curiously she has also had unrelenting migraine attacks in the last week.

💉 We both got Toradol shots and I also got my lifesaving Decadron steroid shot, which has been my most effective way to break a bad migraine flare.

🙌 And thank god, Decadron saved the day and now I can get out of bed, write this to you and care for my family again.

🤔 When you’re stuck in bed with debilitating pain for hours on end, it gives you a lot of time to think.

Mostly about why the hell did I have such an intense flare after I was doing so well?

Why have I had more flares lately?

Is all this mind-body stuff I study just bulls**t?

It was a serious crisis of faith.

🕵‍♀️ So I put on my migraine detective hat and sorted through my Migraine Self-Care Diaries over the last couple of years to look for clues.

And here’s my hypothesis…

♀️ Perimenopause.

I’m 43 and my period has been harder to track over the last year, especially with the kind of IUD I have.

📈And my average migraine frequency and intensity has gone up in the last year as well.

Migraine is complex, and there has always been a clear connection between my hormonal fluctuations and migraine.

Which is why I never believed that migraine is purely neuroplastic.

🧠 In Pain Reprocessing Therapy, neuroplastic pain is pain that has developed from the brain misinterpreting safe sensations as dangerous, rather than having a structural or biochemical cause.

💭 Now don’t get me wrong, I still believe that our thoughts, emotions and stress levels can amplify our migraine symptoms.

But there can definitely be biochemical interactions that go under the radar of our conscious awareness, like hormonal shifts, and impact our migraine no matter how hard we try to live a balanced life.

As any of my Beyond Migraine clients can tell you, I am not a purist.

🧰 I advocate for using all the tools we have available to treat migraine, including meds, yoga, Pain Reprocessing, stress relief and all the rest.

So after looking at the data in my Migraine Self-Care Diaries, I’m going to follow my own advice:

It’s time to try some new tools.

For the first time in 5 years, I reached out to my neurologist’s office for an appointment to get on a preventative migraine medication.

And I also ordered some Ayurvedic supplements for menopause.

I like to cover all my bases from Western and Eastern medicine.

🍃 I’ve been contemplating what I can let go of in my life as I approach this erratic transition into this new phase of my female body.

There’s only so much we can control with migraine.

But I’m willing to keep trying new ways to live my best life in spite of migraine with integrity, curiosity and adventure.

Did your migraine get worse with perimenopause or menopause? What helped you?

I’d love to get some advice from you all.

Reply with your words of wisdom.

In solidarity,

Adriane