Migraines.... and biology!

Today, I came into work late because I had a migraine, and I needed a little extra rest and time to let the hardcore medication work. Nothing unusual about this; frankly, I get these way too often to be seriously sideswiped by them. It's been a hard few days in this regard, mostly because I had one on Saturday night into Sunday morning, that the medication muted for a while until I had to take MORE meds Sunday afternoon. Monday was okay until the evening... and then it was meaner and meaner until finally, it woke me up at 4am, demanding more meds. I'm better now, but I'm betting I'll be taking fioricet later today.

The weird thing about today is that my husband (we'll call him Loverboy for amusement's sake) also had a migraine. He gets them about once a year, although it's been about 2 years since the last 'event'. Unfortunately, Loverboy gets the Classic Migraine - that means auras, light sensitivity, nausea, stomach cramps, and nasty amounts of high-octane pain. I am lucky (sort of), and only get the Common Migraine, specifically Cluster Headaches. They are nasty pieces of work as well - generally a spike into one eye, one side of my sinus becomes entirely stuffed, I only sometimes get the one teary eye, and the entire half of my head feels like it's on fire. They tend to be repeaters - you think you've gotten rid of it, and then you have a rebound, or a second one, or something like that and you are in pain again. But this time, you can't take the real medication (such as Maxalt or Imitrex) since that's just once per 24 hours, so you have to take your backup. Mine is Fioricet plus Codeine. (Fioricet is a barbituate plus caffeine.) Whee. I had never taken anything so hard core in all my life before this started happening.

Now to the pseudo-scientific part of the discussion. I think Loverboy's migraines are mostly due to exhaustion and stress. Plus, right now there happens to be a low-pressure system hovering over our semi-fair city. As for mine... I think they're all because of a malfunction in my smooth endoplasmic reticulum. Did I mention I'm taking Biology classes at night? :) Prepare your boredom shields!!

The smooth endoplasmic reticulum is an organelle in the cell. Its membrane is connected to the nuclear envelope, and it is joined to the rough endoplasmic reticulum. Several things happen in the smooth ER. The functions I'm concerned with are synthesizing sex hormones/steroids and cleansing toxins. In liver cells, the smooth ER is responsible for the toxin cleansing (specifically things like alcohol and barbituates) and in brain cells, it synthesizes the sex hormones. Did you know that when a person develops a higher "tolerance" for a drug, it's because their cells have grown more smooth endoplasmic reticulum to deal with the influx of toxins?

Here's where we get into pure hypothesis without benefit of scientific backup. I believe that when my hormones reach certain changes in level (those hormones that are produced in the smooth ER of those brain cells), that sends out messenger cells to my liver, my stomach, and the vein cells of my brain's meninges (the brain membrane.... insane in the membrane!! ahem.). Those messenger cells tell my liver's smooth ER to screw up detoxifying the alcohol from my blood stream, and my stomach's smooth ER to stop producing lactase (the enzyme for lactose, the lovely protein in all kinds of yummy dairy products), and then they tell the cells in my brain to start constricting my blood vessels so I can have a migraine!

At least, that's my theory.

What do I do with this theory? I dunno. I can't not eat dairy products... perhaps just not a quesadilla... when the hormones are running. Heh. Gives me the poos. I haven't yet figured out what to modify to affect my migraines, but I will. I will.

In the meantime... fioricet is our friend.