Teradactly Dinosaurs with Messy Hair.

Today, I will be discussing how to spot someone with a migraine thats trying to hide it. Eesh, I sound like a PBS video! Ah!

We migrainers know how to spot other migrainers, despite our best efforts to hide it. However, we are usually pretty good at hiding it to everyone else because we don't want everyone to feel sorry or annoyed by us. If lucky, migrainers will have a good spouse/boyfriend/bestfriend/closeperson that can recognize these weird quirky traits and get help for the migrainer because usually, the migrainer might appear to be listening to you or involved in the current action he/she is doing, but really, they're not. In fact, they are lost in space. Or their head. You know.

This is me when I am in the comfort of being alone when suffering from a migraine:

Its painful. Usually when its at this point, I had spent most of the day hiding it and then when I can *finally* CLOSE MY DOOR and be free of all plans for the rest of the day and hide under my covers, this is what I look like:  A teradactyl tongue-sticking out dinosaur with messy hair. Why does acting like a teradactyl (is this even how you spell teradactyl? I'm thinking of that flying dinosaur that screeches and stuff.And has arms like those shown above), help? I don't know. Why does sticking out my tongue help? I don't know. ITs probably psychological.

So enough for the comedy. Today I went out to brunch with one of my best life time friends. We have been friends since preschool, and about 6 or so years ago we found each other again and started meeting up every once in awhile. Well a couple years ago I found out she suffers from the same problems as me- the stomachaches and headaches, multiple times a week, if not every day. So over the years we have been swapping tips on what helps and what doesn't. So I conjured up a simple list for anyone out there that reads this that has migraines & nausea, maybe this can help.

Migraines: (Its a long transformation) It can go in *any order* but this is the order I am randomly putting it in. As you take out items one by one, track how you are feeling.

EASY:

1) Week One: Take out chocolate. Don't worry...this may be hard for some people    ALL people, but don't worry. After this whole transformation, there is relief. Keep reading.
examples of chocolate: Milk chocolate, fudge, icing, m&ms, Oreos, chocolate flavoring, etc.

2) Week Two: Stop eating ham and turkey deli meat. THIS INCLUDES!: Hot Dogs, Pork- anything from a pig. (Again, there is relief later). Ham and all related deli meat and pork products are full of Sodium Nitrate and Nitrite. Try switching to Boar's Head deli turkey, and Holmel's (I think thats brand name) brand for ham. Nature's Promise also sells a nitrate-free ham for big meals (Easter, Christmas, etc.) for the holidays.

3) Week Three: Stop using perfume, if you have any, and do your best to stay away from frequent users in your household, or ask friends not to use it when they will be with you. Wash clothes that still carry even the slight fragrance, and sheets too. Also, take out any air fresheners in your house or car. These are not head-friendly. Also watch out for scented hairspray. Anything that is cosmetic and smells good, try and stay away from.

4) Week Four: When is the last time you have washed your bed linen? This tip is for migrainers that often wake up with it and it lingers all day. 1- Wash your sheets. *Wash your pillowcases*. What happens is you are breathing in excessive amounts of dust on these sheets as you sleep. Believe it or not, some migraines are triggered by allergies. Try and get a prescription from your doctor for Flomax, or Veramyst (What I use-it helps). These are both nasal sprays. I always know when its time to change my sheets like clockwork because I wake up with a migraine one day. When imerged in this cleaning spree, pull your bed out and vacuum underneath. Dust your entire room (preferably in the morning so the remainder particles can have time to settle and not circulate while you are in there sleeping).

5) Stop drinking wine. In fact, stop drinking alcohol. You can reintroduce it back later, keep reading. Wine is full of nitrites. I think white wine is worse...?

6) Make sure you are not skipping meals. Sometimes low blood sugar can trigger a migraine. Drink plenty of water.

7) Check your eyesight. If you don't need any assistive devices, maybe its time to make an appt with an opthamologist and get your eyes checked. If your eyes are straining daily, this causes major headache pain. Also, if you already have glasses, is it time to get a new prescription? Also, make sure you always have plenty of light when you are reading. Are you reading in bed before you sleep? Turn on the overhead light instead of just a book light. Don't stare at a bright computer screen or TV screen when the rest of the room is dark.

8) Watch your caffeine intake. I'm not going to be the type to say take caffeine out of your diet, because I know the withdrawal effects on taking it all out suddenly. Instead, just evaluate how much you are taking in. Write down a sample day record of what you take in. Check medications. Check your vitamin. Check your headache prescriptions! Excedrin (OTC) has a lot of caffeine in it. Caffeine has very powerful vasoconstriction actions and helps minimize the blood vessels in your brain, therefore taking away the pain. So I'm not going to say avoid caffeine- because that would make me a hippocrate. I very often turn to caffeine to make my pain go away, but does that mean I am addicted? No. What you need to do is look at your balance. I know I can afford to take the caffeine in excedrin because I don't get caffeine elsewhere- I do not drink coffee. Green tea does not have a lot of caffeine (my only caffeinated tea I drink). So, look at your daily intake- Is it a lot higher than you thought? Maybe its time to dwindle down a little....*little by little*, every day. Every week. Do it slow. This way, you lower your tolerance. This way, with less constant caffeine in your system, it can be a reliable vasoconstrictor when you need it most. I find that If I take excedrin every day for a week long headache, by the fourth or fifth day- its not working. However, If I don't take it for a month, Excedrin will work within fifteen minutes. I can go from lying on the floor to bouncing and cartwheels in the street.


HARDER (If you're still not noticing ANY improvement):

9) Take out all obvious dairy. This INCLUDES: milk, yogurt, CHEESE, butter, cream,  etc. After a week of that drastic food change, now you have to complete your dairy free movement- Check labels! Dairy is in many things you might not have expected. Nilla Wafers, i found, for example, has milk. LOTS of cookies have milk, and some crackers. Some bread companies. Some restaurants (and homecookers) use milk to make scrambled eggs. So now its time to play detective. Read labels on everything. TV DINNERS more often than not use milk (I don't know why). Luckily- Milk is considered one of the (4?) Major allergens in the U.S. and the FDA requires that nutritional labels list it at the end of the list in bold if it is in or may be in the product. So this makes it easy for you- you don't have to read through a long list of ingredients.



Example. Left Lower side.

 10)  Try taking out obvious artificial flavoring. (i.e. all candy). Watch out for red candy- swedish fish, strawberry candies, fruity candies, anything with a color. This works wonderfully for some people, others see no effect. So, try it. Also, stay away from smoothies that use a fruit mix and not real fruit. You don't know true pain until you find out fruit mix for smoothies will cause you to be on the floor.


NAUSEA:

I don't have much for nausea, because not only is it a tricky business (The GI system is very complex) but I have a couple tips. Please, if your symptoms persist, go see a doctor. I am not a doctor. I am not even a registered nurse yet. I am just speaking from *personal* experience and none of this information is proven.

1) Try drinking green tea. Not from dunkin donuts! (Although I do use them as a last resort for GT if I cannot find it ANYWHERE else). Green tea was suggested for me to try a couple of years ago by an oriental nurse who was well acquainted with traditional herb relief. It has proven to be 98% effective in treating my nausea. If it doesnt help my nausea, I know I have a stomach bug or something serious. But the rest of the time it *really* helps! Try it! As for personal taste, I loveeeee Tazo's brands, Particularly "Zen" or "China Green tips".   tip- Don't put milk in!! ;)

2) Try finding a candy cane or mint of any kind that has actual peppermint oil. (Read labels). If you like your teeth and prefer not to suck on a candy cane, many vitamin stores will have peppermint oil you can put in tea or take in capsule form. This was suggested to me by an old friend's mother, when I was a child. I have followed it religiously ever since, although now as an adult I tend to use green tea more. Its healthier for my teeth! Note: If you have heartburn, supposedly peppermint is harmful rather than helpful. So this is why it is necessary to be *checked out by a doctor*. The Peppermint supposedly relaxes the esophageal sphincter and therefore lets food back up into the esophagus, causing your pain.

3) Stay away from all dairy products. See paragraph above.

4) Take tomato products out of your diet. This includes: tomato sauce, tomato dip, actual tomatos, pizza, spaghetti, KETCHUP, etc. Tomato's are very acidic and very very very cause GI upset, even with people that don't normally get nauseous on a daily basis. Oranges and Orange Juice are very acidic too.


REINTRODUCING:

After you have wiped all of these common food triggers out of your diet...are you feeling better? If not, (Like, no improvement at all), you need to see a doctor. Right away. Also, did you do everything right? If you choose to take out dairy, are you sure there isnt a sneaky source of it somewhere?

If you ARE feeling better, YAY! It feels good, doesnt it? Now, if you realllllly miss one of the things I told you to take out, here is what you do: reintroduce it. Not a lot at once. And introduce one product at a time. Do it a week at a time. For example, if you have a negative reaction to chocolate after 4 months of not eating any, you know you are probably allergic to that. But take a week off again. THen try it again. Did it cause a reaction again? If so, you can say good bye to chocolate. Unless you like pain. Or, I've heard from some and can *sometimes* attest with personal experience that dark chocolate does not cause as many headaches, but i daresay, use it sparingly.


Are these tips fool proof? No. I follow all of the above tips and I still have frequent headaches and nausea. But, they are no where near as bad as they used to be, and I can usually tell what I did or didn't do to cause the symptom and then I can treat it and it goes away. So if you're a teradactyl dinosaur with messy hair like me, the least you can do is try some of these tips. Can't hurt!!

And as a reward for making it this far in this blog, (I think this may be my longest entry EVER), you get a reward:

This my friends, is what I'm talking about.

THANK YOU FOR READING!


~ A Writer in a Nurse's Body

That Crazy Food Girl.....

A typical possible hypothetical scenario I am probably headed for and deserve in this country:

(Future Date with a guy- Picnic- He packs food for us, thinking it will be romantic)

Guy: "First, for our beverage, I brought a lovely blahblahblah wine for us to enjoy."
Me: Oh! Thats amazing! Really....except I can't have wine. *Slanty I'm sorry face*
Guy: Why not?
Me: It has nitrites....they are wine preservatives. It would make me squirm in extremely unfathomable pain in the form of a migraine.
guy: Oh. Ok, No wine.
Me: I'm so sorry. Please, you enjoy the wine for yourself, please. It looks lovely, there is no reason you can't enjoy it.
Guy: Okay. Well, for an appetizer, I bought us some cute Ritz crackers with peanut butter on them, it is so good. My favorite.
Me: Actually, I'm highly allergic to peanuts. *Slanty I'm sorry face-again*
Guy: oh gosh!! Thats horrible! I'm so sorry. No more peanuts or peanut butter. Will you be ok if I eat it?
Me: of course! Please, go ahead! I just can't eat it.
Guy: Okay. Well....please, have some crackers at least.
Me: Well I would except they have milk in them, and are loaded with corn syrup.
Guy: *vacant confusing stare*
Me: I'm lactose intolerant. And I'm trying to avoid corn syrups or corn products from my diet. Not entirely possible, but I'm trying. 
Guy: Oh. . . Okay...So you can't have the cheese I bought for our sandwiches?
Me: Um...nope. And I can't have ham, either. More nitrates. Anything from a pig, really. *sorry face*
Guy: *sighs*....okay.
Me: I'm so sorry.
Guy: No, no worries. How bout our entree....I bought pasta! oh! It has no cheese! Its just tomato sauce and pasta. Simple. *Smile*
Me: I can't have tomatoes.
Guy: You're kidding.
Me: no, I'm so sorry. No ketchup, tomatoes, or tomato sauce or BBQ sauce....its really acidic for my stomach.
Guy: Oh....well, Okay. Hmmm...well, who needs an entree when you can just have dessert?? Lets have some chocolate cake! I brought Fudge!
Me: I can't have chocolate. Another trigger for migraines.
Guy: OK I'm done. *Walks away*.




I'm going to be a lonely person until the end of time, at this rate.

Let me make this clear, right now. I do not want to be "that crazy food girl". But, I also want to make educated food choices. I want my body to be as healthy as it can be. But that is near impossible in this country today. As I read these health books, I learn more and more about how much *crap* goes into processed foods and it makes me want to eat nothing. But I have to eat something. So, I'm left with organic fruits and vegetables, and home made bread...if I really want to do it completely right.

I don't want to be the girl that people are afraid to be friends with or date because she has too many food stipulations. I don't want friends/romantic interests to be afraid to eat in front of me because they think I will look down on them for eating a cheeseburger. I have met many people like that and even as healthy as I do eat, I even feel inferior eating with them. Like they are criticizing my every bite in their head. I don't ever want to be "that girl". I want to be realistic and down to earth about it (no pun intended).

I have to be honest. In high school I ate Burger King at *least* two times a week and even McDonalds in there a couple times. I am not sure how I managed to finish childhood and high school without gaining 300 pounds, but I somehow did it. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have eaten like that. I would re-do it any day. I just simply wasn't educated about any of this then, and my only "allergy" then was peanuts (since birth).

My "no foods list" is primarily composed of allergies. Only one is anaphylactic. The rest produce undesirable symptoms (migraine or GI issues). The rest, (corn products, meat, sugar products) are the three new things I am trying to stay away from after watching "Food, Inc" and reading "Fast Food Nation"....

I think 95% of this country thinks of people like me like we are in some sort of delusional conspiracy. THey are so engrained into thinking there is nothing wrong with fast food, nothing wrong with foods at the supermarket, nothing wrong with foods that have "healthy" claims written on the box (lies), and think that people like me are just "over the top" crazy about it. I am in a nursing program. Most of my friends (not all) are nurses-to-be and lead healthy lives and exercise a lot. Even they would think most of my food choices are a little crazy.

But how far down the "healthy rabbit hole" am I willing to go? Putting aside the set list of allergies I have (that will not change), lets think about making "food no-no choices". Let's say you choose not to eat foods with corn syrup, or high fructose corn syrup, or non-hydrogenated soybean oil, etc. Okay, well that cuts out 97% of your supermarket choices. Even in the products you thought were healthy. Okay, so then...you re feeling optimistic still. You still have fruit and vegetables and meat in the supermarket, right? And bread?  Well, then you remember that the fruits and veggies you see in your supermarket have been trucked across the nation and are not grown seasonally. They have pesticides on them. They are grown on soil that was not given a chance to rest. They lost a lot of their nutrients. So then.....you decide to buy your fruits and veggies at the local farmers market. Ok, great.  Meat, what to say about meat? Personally, chicken is a big part of whats left for me. I have no symptoms associated with eating chicken or steak (occasionally). However, after watching that video I am tempted to stop eating meat. But.....You can see I'm already far enough down on "what I can eat" to stop eating meat. However, I might try baby steps such as "Meatless Mondays" and go from there.

Then that takes care of food. But then...you realize there are horrible chemicals in the toothpaste you use. You have to go buy organic now. And special mouthwash. And then, you see that the cleaning chemicals you use are going to give you cancer and are bad for the earth so you decide you want to buy cleaning products that are made by the earth and are good for the earth and you.

You can see how it can easily get out of hand. You have to draw lines somewhere and make some educated decisions. But who knows whats really the right thing to do? I know people that are so far down the rabbit hole that they think driving cars is bad for your health, or touching plastic will kill you, or sleeping in a bed, or whatever. People like that can move to the middle of the jungle, if you ask me. I'm trying to never come across as that person. But its such a fine line and still draws a lot of negative attention from most of the "American" people. Americans are slowly starting to catch on, thanks to documentaries like "food Inc" and "fast food nation", but not catching on fast enough.

Side note: I wish there was a way to shut down the huge players in the fast food industry. I just wish. But that would probably start the next American Revolution. . . Also, in one of my "food" books I am reading ( I think its FFN) , one of the authors mentioned that the American/Western culture would never do that because the fast food culture is booming the economy. Sadly, thats where people are spending a lot of their money. The "food industry" would not make any money if people grew their own gardens or went to farmers markets...farmers would be making the money again....woah. Imagine that. Also, The Western healthcare system needs fast food. The health care system treats the major "American" diseases : Obesity, Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc... I am going to be a nurse. Hands down I would rather be paid less than watch us continue to take patients like this "because its booming the healthcare system".

It's one thing to make these choices for myself. I can hold my own. It doesnt bother me. It bothers other people more than it bothers me. But having children and getting married is going to be the tricky part. Moving out into my own place soon is going to be the best part of this...I can (hopefully) grow my own garden or buy from a farmers market, and I can COOK, with ingredients I buy. I have to learn how to actually cook, and fast. Really fast. Like, now.  However, once I can meet a guy that can get past the initial disaster "picnic date" or awkward conversation we have on all this, and STILL wants to date me, and marry me, then its time to have kids. Let me say this now: I have no interest in changing the way my future boyfriend/husband eats. I am doing this for my own body. Of course, if he wanted help and wanted to make these choices, I would gladly assist. But I am sure as hell not going to be "that wife" that criticizes her husband when he eats Burger King or whatever. That would be a very short marriage.

But then the kids. I can't control my (future) husbands food choices. He is a fully grown adult that has a RIGHT to make whatever decisions he wants to make. But is it moral to control my children's? If I had complete say, I make these rules: No dairy, no high fructose corn syrup, no corn products, not too much meat, and no fast food (maybe like once a month *maybe!*).  Is that so wrong? Is it unethical to keep your child away from food you know is bad? Thats good, right?  If you start the child off with these dietary habits from birth, they won't even know the difference until they enter the school system. And I am sure as hell not going to keep my kids home from school just so I can control what they eat. Again, I dont want to be that person. But what happens when little Benny goes to eat at a friends house, and they are having McDonalds for dinner? And Benny likes it? And Benny gets mad at me when I say we are not having that in this household?

I don't want to be the "annoying mom on the block"...where other moms dont want to have my kid over because they don't know what to feed the kid. I don't want to have to panic when I send my kids to other houses. I want my kids to have friends. I dont want my kid to be the poor kid at the lunch table with the "weird organic food".   It makes me sad. I suppose if I want to be realistic about it, the best thing I can do is feed my children "good" food when I am with them, and hope for the best when I am not (at school and at other houses, etc).

I wish there were "healthy food communities- neighborhoods" where realistic (future) mom's like me could live in with their kids (and husband of course!) where everyone made healthy choices like this. Where you could send kids to other houses to play with no problem. The whole neighborhood is dairy free. You could have block parties and not have to worry about whats in the food......just imagine. Maybe one day.

Ok this is really long. I have a little bit more to say, but also have to get to bed. Early Riser tomorrow morning, I am following a Nurse Supervisor as a school assignment for my leadership/management course and I am super excited!!! I'll let ya'll know If i learn any thing awesome.

Again, thank you so much for reading another long post. This is really getting to be a huge passion and focus of mine. Thanks for bearing with me....-


WIth love,

~A Writer in a Nurse's Body

Can we say tomato?

My picture of the week! I usually put it up Fridays but forgot this week. Taken from my iPhone :-)