Early comments make me think people didn't read the article. Short summary: hunger reduces long-term inflammatory pain but reduce short-term acute pain was not reduced.
When I first read the title I thought of my observation with the migraines I get. Personally, migraine pain only onsets when 'everything is ok,' in terms of safety, stress, food and hydration; but the other symptoms will start at any time.
For example, while rock climbing once, I was getting down from the top of a mountain, seeing those 'squirlly refractive light worms' in my vision that some people with severe migraines get. I had all the symptoms of having a migraine--and was lucky I didn't die on that mountain--but the debilitating pain only came when I was down, in the car, away from danger, with food and water. This is how it always is.
Given this experience, I believe there must be a lot more to the psychological-physical aspect if interpretations of pain than what is shown here, and personal experiences may be why others are jumping to conclusions.
> For example, while rock climbing once, I was getting down from the top of a mountain, seeing those 'squirlly refractive light worms' in my vision that some people with severe migraines get. I had all the symptoms of having a migraine--and was lucky I didn't die on that mountain--but the debilitating pain only came when I was down, in the car, away from danger, with food and water. This is how it always is.
I also suffer from migraines and I've tried different "tricks" to get rid of them or stop getting them altogether. Thankfully, I only get them ~2-3 times a month. (How some people live with chronic migraines is beyond me.)
I just wanted to say that I've also noticed this pattern. I have never gotten a migraine in a high-stress or high-stakes situation -- for example, I often get them in the car (maybe attributed to some kind of motion sickness) but never while actually driving. As a side note, I started drinking green tea 2-3 times a day which has decreased attacks by ~60% (I keep a log).
I wonder if that's due to the coffein in the green tea? Too bad I'm very sensitive to coffein and often can't sleep at night when I take coffein too late during the day...
What kind of green tea do you drink? I've read that there are very different levels of coffein in the different green tea types.
For me the number one trigger was caffeine, but because I'd never had that much, doctors just said it was probably stress, so I didn't eliminate it. Also because this all happened when I was a kid, I didn't have the wherewithal / knowledge to try an elimination diet. I was an anxious kid so my parents just accepted this "diagnosis" of stress as the main trigger (it definitely is one factor).
I cut out caffeine to help me sleep better (after about 14 years of migraines of varying frequency and severity), and found my baseline (monthly, moderate severity) migraines almost completely vanished. Now I only get them if my sleep or food schedule or amounts are seriously disturbed.
Not sure if it helps, but apparently tea, especially green tea contains more l-theanine. This counteracts the jitters you get from coffee. Maybe a supplement would help.
Same here. I get visual disturbances that alert me to take the sumatriptan right away. Sometimes there will be no immediate migrane but given how incapacitating they are when they do happen, I medicate whenever I experience the black and white mirror ball start spinning.
