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Comment by iainctduncan | Hacker News Reader

I have been a migraineur for decades. Mine are classic aura, with the whole "looking through broken glass" thing for a half hour or so when they happen. This year one of my partner's doctors mentioned positive results from supplementing with Vitamin B-2 and Coenzyme Q10, and it has dramatcially lowered their frequency. Mine are especially bad when the air pressure is seesawing which it does a lot here in the spring and fall, but I would guess I'm down to something like 20% of the previous years numbers.

Definitely worth trying.

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> "looking through broken glass"

I think we have similar symptoms, but I have no headache, just the "broken glass" that passes over my vision. Usually takes about 15 mins to half an hour or so to pass.

This is the best visual representation that I have found of it ove the years:

https://imgur.com/gallery/kY0I0Ht

Yes that's silent migraine with aura, you experience the visual effects but not the headache. It's rare but happens for some people.

The representation is really good in my opinion! Gives me flashbacks.

I suppose an even better one would be "looking through broken glass that keeps fucking moving around".

The weirdest thing I discovered was that, back when I juggled professionally, I couldn't read at all during that aura but could still juggle, even hard things like 5+ balls. Strangely it did not screw up peripheral vision.

Worst time was when it came on before a music school performance. Not a hope in hell of keeping track of which line the little circles were on...

I used to get typical migraines, starting around junior year of high school. One every 6-18 months, usually, for years. Visual auras for twenty or thirty minutes, then a few hours of bad headache.

Over the years the frequency has swung toward the longer end of that, and now the last three times I haven’t gotten the headache part at all, but other weird symptoms. One time, bad tunnel vision for a while and then feeling like I had to go to sleep immediately. Another, just a weird disconnected/disembodied feeling for a couple hours. The most recent, I got fairly bad aphasia for ten or fifteen minutes, which is the fist time anything like that’s happened to me. Not just trouble thinking of words, though that too, but knowing the word I wanted to say and having something else come out instead, no matter how many times I tried.

Migraines are weird.

Have you tried a sumatriptan as soon as the aura starts? Works for me. YMMV.

I haven’t tried anything but excedrine migraine. If I still got a couple a year and they still gave me like 6 hours of killer headaches, I’d probably look into something like that, but the frequency’s been closer to every other year than twice a year and I don’t get much pain with them now, so I’ve not bothered.

Maybe I should, though, given the other comments in this thread about them causing brain lesions…

The one aspect this misses that's so hard to communicate is the lack of visual processing inside the sort of curled aura "area". When I was getting them often as a kid, I would basically become illiterate over the course of 15minutes, because anything in that shimmering area was not parseable. I could SEE the shape of a letter, but I couldn't read the word. That shimmering area grows and grows till it's covering all of your vision, but near the start you can still read out of one side.

It was by far, the part of migraines I hated the most as a kid because it took intense pain that people assume you're overblowing, and prefaced it with 30-45 minutes of people thinking I was an idiot/doing some weird awkward joke. (Or having a stroke! The dread of not being able to speak correctly, not being able to read, a slow pain in my temple getting stronger and stronger, and now the teacher is calling 911 while the class starts screaming.)

Got this exact thing once last year a few months after recovering from a very bizarre and severe viral infection that ended with about 2 weeks of bells balsy.

It was bizarre. No headache at all. And unlike other posters here, I could still read easily.

I think I had Parvo, no idea for sure tho

Ah yes, that visual is perfect. I showed something similar to a friend a long time ago and they said 'that's migraine? i have that every few weeks but not much else so never thought much of it; i thought migraines meant headaches'.

Just want to second this. I was getting migraines every 2 weeks (visual auras, thumping headache for 3-6 hours etc) mainly triggered by stress & lack of sleep as far as I could tell. Started taking Vitamin B and I haven't had a migraine since - for over a year).

There is research to back this up as well: - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33779525/ - Conclusion: Vitamin B2 400 mg/day significantly reduced the duration, frequency, and pain score of migraine attacks.

I've tried not CoQ10 and high doses of B2, without any impact on my aura frequency or duration. Migraine auras are such a pesky thing which medical science clearly doesn't understand. The typical migraine drugs like triptans are useless for auras, since the drugs typically take longer to kick in that the duration of the aura.

Glad to hear the supplements are working. And you get to impress peope with the colour of your pee!

There seems to be a link between migraines and Mithocondrial Disease. If frequency/intensity of migraines diminishes with Vitamin B and Q10, it may be worth investigating. Especially if you have muscular fatigue or exhaustion.

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