Hello friends. This will be the blog that takes me back to the beginning of where this journey had started. Which now I realize was also my first step to finding invaluable information that I would be building my returning health upon. Funny how when you are almost at the end of another chapter in your life, you view the journey much differently.

Before I begin, I want to make sure that I make a very important point clear. I believe that we can benefit, and I have benefited from the best of both worlds; Western Medicine and Alternative Holistic Medicine. I believe that if we can embrace what is good in both medicines, we could achieve sooo much more then what we are capable of right now. Western Medicine has advanced beyond any ones expectations being relatively young in the aspect of traditional medicine. Whereas Traditional Holistic Practices date further back then we even have humanely documented. So it would be hard to not give Holistic Medicine a little soapbox to stand upon. I truly believe I would not be this far advanced in my recovery if I did not blend the two medical backgrounds.

One more little point before I jump in is that, there is a place in our medicinal cabinets for Tylenol, Advil, Gravol, OTC products and prescription medications. I am thankful for the formulation of all of these medications, they have helped myself and obviously many others throughout the world. We are very lucky to live in a generation where there are an abundance of options. I’m only saying… that we should take a look at ALLLL of the options. You may be surprised where you find your answers.

Now lets begin.

In my early teens my headaches started to become a seasonal occurrence, and being so young, I never made the correlation between my seasonal allergies and my headaches, and apparently neither did our family doctor at the time. I was sent for eye examinations, which naturally began the beginning of wearing glasses. I only had them on periodically when I needed to see anything up close like the chalkboard. For those who have only been taught through a white or smart board the chalkboard was black or green and the chalk dust filled the classrooms with a fog like atmosphere that would make Dracula shutter. (I’m being sarcastic)…The dust then commenced all of our runny noses to begin the yearly trek towards the tissue box. Those of us with seasonal allergies and the plight of the chalk dust had no choice but to reach for the Daily Dose of Sinutab or Reactine before school. The funny thing was if you were caught behaving badly and sometimes if you were really good, you had to or where bestowed the privilege, to clean the chalkboard after school for the teacher. Those who misbehaved would be forced to stay after school and clean the boards and chalk erasers but at the same time if you were the teachers pet it was a privilege to clean the chalk board because you were the favorite. Funny how we never made that connection back then. Like what the??? Lol. Oh well to late now. Well the chalk dust would get all compounded in our little sniffers causing lots of beginning sinus troubles.

Had I’d known then what I know now, I would have known that the sinuses can cause severe headaches so when you are in the midst of a sinus infection or dandy cold or flu you probably are enjoying a doozie of a headache/migraine. Our nasal passages and ear canals can wreak havoc on our brains when the tiny passages are swollen or under the attack from viruses, bacterial infections and allergies. On Guard!!! They all; ears, nose and throat, share that rental space on top of our neck.,. the head. With tiny little vessels trying hard to carry oxygenated blood to our power organ, the brain, the flow has to fight little road blocks and when this happens we get pounding in our heads from the vessels having soo much pressure inside them trying to squeeze a normal flow of blood through a smaller vessel when they are constricted… OWIE!! Until we do some sort of nasal cleanse like a warm saline solution sinus rinse, a Nettie Pot for instance, which was not available back then, will our passages release the road block that has been created by outside particles also releasing pressure in our face and brain. We can also resort to some sort of sinus medicine or nasal spray that can help decrease the mucus in our passages relaxing the pressure pushing on the major vein and its branches that wrap around our faces coming down each side of our noses. A mineral we can turn to, to help seasonal allergies is Zinc. This knowledge would have been wonderful to know 30 years ago, (in a few later blogs I will get into the dosages of Zinc that can help decrease the pressure of seasonal allergies).

Not knowing this information at that time, I ended up on allergy medications and needles every week, then twice a week to help with all the environmental allergies I was suffering from. Which with all of these antihistamines my body was also becoming dehydrated…causing more headaches. I have no idea what the name of the medicine was that I was receiving but it was the best that was available, being injected by our family doctor who would be allowed to smoke while injecting me with this fluid. Can I get a What? What?….. Little did I know that a fair amount of the allergies I was suffering from were also going to be connected to the foods I was eating and would also be the cause of organ troubles that were starting to plague my young person. I will get into these correlations in a few more blogs further down our journey. There is no blame here, because like us at this very moment, we are all trying to do the best with the knowledge that we have. It is only in these recent years that we are now understanding that food can play a huge roll in the allergies children seem to be afflicted with even more rapidly then when I was in my younger years. Scarey! One thing is for sure, my parents made sure we had the best of what was available to us in order to increase our quality of life so that we could have fun being kids.

Soon the allergy medicine turned into allergy medicine and inhalers, which more headaches seemed to arise with, and now I was old enough to have regular strength Tylenol. In the beginning that was a miracle cure. I could swallow a little white tablet go to my room and cuddle into my bed and sleep it off. Wow, it seemed like a good thing.

As my studies became more demanding with each increasing grade so did the strain on my eyes reading the glossy pages of the textbooks. But I was a reader and still am. No matter the pain I would push through and make sure I read every last paragraph with glasses on, the lights dim, my allergy medicine and Tylenol inside me with my inhaler when needed. I was very thankful. My mom and grandmother both loved reading too so I came by it naturally. There would be times my mom or nan or dad would come upstairs to check on me and would find me under my desk with a nice blanket on the floor and a pillow to cushion my back, bewildered why I was huddled under the furniture where even Yoda would have been cramped. “Crammed under the furniture I was.” I would say I liked it cause it was cozy, but the truth was the glare coming in from the window and off the finish of the desk with the glossy pages was KILLING me, and so the strain on my eyes and conclusively my brain, compounded.

I was a very lucky girl because anything I ever needed was provided for me. My mom worked in a pharmacy and would bring us home vitamins to take every morning. For some reason there was something inside of me that just craved them, unlike my sister who would do anything to forget about them. We didn’t have just any vitamin we had the tasty Flintstone’s Vitamins and little did my mom know at that time, just by supplementing me daily, was decreasing the occurrence of the already bothersome headaches.

As I got older, away from home, started work and university, my headaches now became migraines. Lets face it, when we are young we don’t always eat properly, sleep properly and we have to work to pay for secondary education, and our apartments. We cram and pull all hours to finish projects if we want to succeed. Doesn’t sound all that different from today I guess, besides the cramming for tests, you take away one stress and bring in a new one. With university looming over me like I said, my headaches became migraines and as they increased so did the medications. I would loose my vision and it would feel like my eyes were under water with the waves sloshing in front of me, pins and needles in my nose and a gang of Ninja’s practicing their skills with sharp razor edged swords slashing through my brain, sound familiar? Blurring vision eventually led to my vision vanishing for 30 minutes to an hour… then came the sickness and uncontrollable vomiting, which the only way I knew for it to stop was to increase the Tylenol.

Having to take 3 and 4 Extra Strength Tylenol at one dose just to open my eyes so the light wouldn’t hurt me, I felt I had to find something stronger because now they were becoming an everyday vitamin instead of a pain reliever. I knew I couldn’t keep up with the 2 and 3 daily dozes of 2-3 or 3-4 extra strength tablets. Then I found Extra Strength Ibuprofen. AWWWWWW!! Can you see the angels singing well that’s what I felt like. My body got soooo used to Tylenol that they wouldn’t work anymore. It was like drinking a glass of water to help you with the pain of giving birth, it just became useless. OHHH how I wished someone would have known to tell me to drink more water that dehydration could also be contributing but all I was told was to try Ibuprofen and this advise was from my health providers. Therefore my pain medication, (which seems mild now), was increased to the next level.

I didn’t realize that this was just my first jump of many into stronger medicines that was inevitably hurting my insides causing my headaches to get worse.