Posted by Charlie (205.148.196.16) on October 02, 2000 at 04:12:28:
BIOFEEDBACK: When I was diagnosed, my neurologist taught me a biofeedback technique that was very helpful. It sounds nuts, but I was told to "think" of forcing blood-flow from behind my throbbing eye, down my neck and into my arms and hands. When properly done, your hands will warm and you may have a decrease in pressure in the eye. Almost always, I was able to shorten the attacks. It can be exhausting but the payoff is worth it. The Dr. said to think of it as "filling" your hand or hands with redirected blood diverted from the head. Anything to retard blood-flow from the noggin is the idea behind this method. It's important to do this through the pain. It isn't necessary to sit still for this but it is necessary to keep at it. I got my attacks down from 40 minutes to no more than 15 or 20 most of the time. I also learned that it's a good idea to keep at it four or five minutes longer than you feel necessary. It takes no special training and what I'm writing here is as much as I learned about this little technique. Just keep the blood away from that throbbing eye! It's far from perfect but it's one more tool that I used very successfully. Later, I combined this with Inderal and had pretty good results with this combination. I hope this can help some of the newcomers to the board. It doesn't always kill the pain but I found it almost always shortens the attacks PFDAN- - -Charlie