Ocular migraines

[tatsu15]

Hi

I've been having them a lot lately. Once every other day. Should I be worried. I get a really bad headache and eye ache after the aura goes away so I'm assuming it's vascular. I had no history of migraine with aura until my second pregnancy. Right after I delivered they went away for 16 months only to reappear again. It's scary, especially if I get one while driving my older daughter to school. They did an MRI and found nothing.

[Naturopath Mom]

Migranes can be often linked to liver congestion or food/chemical sensitivies. May that be playing a part?

[hibana]

Visual migraines can also be related to your progesterone levels. This shows up mostly in post-menopausal women, so your best bet for finding a doctor who can determine if that is the case may be a gyn who primarily sees post-menopausal women. Since the timing is relate to your pregnancies, I would suspect hormonal causes.

(pm me if you want more info, I have a relative with this issue)

[mrs_mandolini]

 Lots of "natural" things for migraines- food sensitivities, regular sleep schedules, avoiding caffeine, & hormones seem to be the biggest things.  I sleep regularly and avoid my known trigger foods & caffeine, but started having migraines 3 - 4 days a week.  I think it is related to hormone changes with aging, other family members of mine have also had them worsen with age. 

In my case a prescription allopathic migraine preventive has made me feel better than I have in 4 years.  Not for everyone perhaps but there are more options like this than there were even a few years ago. 

Many people keep a food diary.  I'm affected by sulfites.. no more wine, or crackers containing sodium metabisulfite  (more crackers than you would think contain that!).   That's a pretty common one and it was easy to figure out since my head starts hurting within minutes of eating whatever the item is.    One of my relatives is very sensitive to all alliums- no garlic or onions in any of his food or else big whopper migraine the next day.  I'm sure that one was a lot harder to figure out!  So for some people it's like an elimination diet, but you can at least find lists of common trigger foods on line & see how many of them you are regularly consuming. 

[mrs_mandolini]

p.s. in answer to your question "Should I be worried?"  I don't think so... they are no fun and the visual disturbances can be really bizarre (I didn't used to have auras or visual disturbances when I was younger, now I do!) but you have had an MRI and so have already basically ruled out the "bad scary" causes of headaches.