Migraines

Migraines are parasympathetic rebounds of the autonomic nervous system.  They occur when a client has experienced (or created) a fairly chronic level of stress over a significant period of time, changing the Tone of the ANS, which is responsible for maintaining the internal environments of our bodies and linking them with our emotional states.  Migraines don’t occur during periods of stress. They occur immediately following significant stress. Instead of re-opening the blood vessels to the head by relaxing the smooth muscles, the parasympathetic system dramatically over-reacts and causes the vessels to open way too much.

Teaching a client to change stress responses is critical to resolving this problem long term, and that usually starts with recognizing that stress is an internal response–not an external cause.  Stress is the experience of needing to have more control over a situation than one can have.  Learning to let go of that need for control is a very basic (and very difficult) element of success.

I haven’t personally found that all migraines respond to the same thing. Many of the folks with whom I’ve worked have indeed had driven character (which I call the Reversed brain), but others have had what I call the Disconnect pattern relating to severe early trauma.  I’ve trained a number of these clients with T3/T4, but others who didn’t respond to that at all were helped dramatically by C3/C4.  Still others benefited from the Reversal training, if they had that pattern.

I’ve seen some evidence that strong alpha asymmetries in the temporals can be trained with T3/T4, which will also often help.  Anything that balances out autonomic function–avoiding the long periods of fight-or-flight stress levels–is likely to have a positive effect as well.

HEG

HEG is ideal for headaches, especially migraines, since they often involve blood rushing to the head in a release period after a time of stress (parasympathetic rebound).  When the distribution system for blood is limited, not only does prefrontal executive function suffer, many suffer the throbbing headache resulting from too much blood with no place to go. HEG training (I’ve used both with great success) develops the perfusion system by stressing it, and the front of the brain becomes no stranger to significant blood flows.

Jeff Carmen originally developed pIR HEG to work with his migraine clients. It makes some sense that, if at least some migraines are caused by sympathetic rebounds, with excessive blood flow to the head at the end of a stress period, that training which purports to build extended and denser capillary beds would be helpful.  It’s like the difference between a road that brings traffic into a town with two cross streets and a road that brings traffic into a town with dozens of cross streets and through streets.  Heavy traffic into the first town is almost guaranteed to create backups, while the second will be more able to diffuse the traffic and offer a variety of ways around the main route.

Why chocolate has an effect on migraines

Placebo-controlled trials showed that caffeine among other chemicals found in chocolate can increase cerebral blood flow and cause the release of norepinephrine. Those who are prone to migraines are already likely to under-regulate cerebral blood flow when it is increasing (so they have a parasympathetic rebound and get too much blood too quickly when stress is released).  So, they are likely to experience a migraine.

Since chocolate does increase cerebral blood flow, people whose brains are slow, particularly when they feel a need to jack them up can use chocolate to achieve that.