I see a lot of you have some (albeit meager) experience with sex but some of you are woefully uninformed about migraine. And it is a serious subject, one about which I have lots of first-hand experience. I am a male in my mid-fifties. When I was a kid I'd get an ocassional headache and really suffer with it as asprin did nothing to relieve it. But it would eventually go away and that was that, until September of 1979. I got a headache that would not stop. After almost 3 months I made an apointment with a neurologist (OK I was a little slow). He did the EEG thing and lots of test and then pronounced that I had migraine headaches!! I have had almost continuous migraines to this day. I was very healthy at the time of my diagnosis. I was a long distance runner, in seminary, married and had a 2 year old daughter.

Classic migraine occurs on one side of the head or the other and can have multiple triggers which can include tension, jaw alignment problems, strobing lights (especially flourencent tubes), mensturation in females, food allergies and reaction to food chemicals such as MSG (monosodium glutenate) or no apparent trigger at all. Oh yes! Sex can also trigger them and ocassionally cure them. And there are varying degrees of intensity. The worst are called Grand Mal Migraine and they can include blindness, inmobility, hearing loss, all temporary conditions and all secondary to the intense, debilitating pain. And lest you think I exaggerate about the pain I have a basis for comparison. When I was 27 I suffered a basal skull fracture which is the only pain worse than a migraine in my experience ( No, there is no apparent connection ).

There are some really horrorific medicines out there which affect migraine sufferers differently. That which works for one may do nothing for another or maybe even exacerbate the condition. I have finally found a combination of drugs which allows me to have a fairly normal life. The blood pressure meds cut down on the intensity of the headaches when I do get them but not on the frequency. This has a very negative impact on my sex life as I have normal BP when I don't have a migraine. I also take enough narcotic to make an addict envious but because it is titrated against pain I am not addicted (does anyone watch "House"? "I don't have a drug problem. I have a pain problem."). I know this because on rare ocassions the headaches will go away for three or four weeks at a time I have no desire to take the narcotic. In fact its the opposite. I get my hopes up and think "Oh joy, I may never have to take another codiene again!"

And ironically my fiance also suffers from chronic migraine only she has a very rare form that cause ischemia (lack of oxygen) in the temporal lobe of her brain (read mini-strokes) which so far have caused lessions that were originally diagnosed as MS. And a couple of her strokes have not been little. She has suffered partial paralysis, slurred speech, memory loss and other nasty effects. So far she has always made complete recovery. The last one took almost a year for her to recover completely.

So, migraine is real. It's no laughing matter. And if sex cures yours, God bless you.