Good Morning!

Well, it’s morning while I’m writing this.  Today is a busy day, I have several things on my list to do, among them writing to you all! 🙂

Err… what’s this?

Ugh, I’ve got a headache.

This is not an unusual thing for me, I’ve been a headache/migraine person since I was three years old.  As a side note, try telling your mother your head hurts when you’re three… I don’t recall exactly, but I’m sure it went something like this:

“Mom, my head hurts.”

“Ok honey, did you fall and hit it?”

“No, Mom, my head hurts!”

“Ok sweetie, go play with your brother, you’ll be fine.”

Fast forward a couple hours, in which my migraine became fully developed and raging uncontrolled.

Three year old me wailing/screaming: “Mommmmmy!  My head hurts baaaaaaaddd!”

Panic Mode!

Mom now goes into panic mode…  What could be going on with her son, he’s screaming in pain with no visible injury, and he is definitely NOT faking it.  It was the early 1970’s, so there was probably a phone call to the Pediatrician, which may or may not have generated an adequate solution.  I have a vague childhood memories of at least one visit to the ER when I was in serious pain, likely from one of these headaches.  I do not fault my Mom one bit for any of this, what toddler in the 1970’s had migraines? 

I’m sure I wasn’t alone, but the knowledge and awareness of migraines was woefully inadequate back then.

I would argue that even today, awareness about headaches in children is still rather low…  As an example, I went looking for pictures for this post, and searched Pixabay and Unsplash.  These are the usual sites I go to for pictures, and the one above was the only picture I could find of a child who appears to be experiencing a headache, and she is female.  Now, I know that is not a definite causal relationship, more of a correlation… but still.

As a Pharmacist, for the past 25 years, it was very rare to fill a prescription for Imitrex or any other “Triptan” for anyone under 18.  Part of the reason for this is that the drug hasn’t been adequately studied in the pediatric population, and is officially approved only for patients over 18.  Again, further evidence that, for the most part, headaches and migraines are not usually considered a real problem for children and adolescents. 

For some of us, it was… According to Migraine.com, migraines occur in women 3 times more often than men, and the most common age range is 35 to 55.  So, to say that a 3 year old male with migraines is uncommon, is a quite an understatement.  Mom, I get why you didn’t understand!

Last Night

So, what happened between when we last spoke, and now…  let’s see:

Well, not too shabby!  I think this not eating thing is pretty good for my blood sugar numbers.

I felt fine last night, oddly, my funk I talked about yesterday in An Experiment of One #3 disappeared around 4:00pm.  Oddly, this was about the time I started to dip a little bit, then respond with another micro-release from my liver.  This was probably the time my body thought it would be getting some food…

Nope, faked you out!  Oh, how did my belly growl back at me last night, Nicole could vouch for that, haha!

But you know what?  I felt good.  I even speculated with Nicole that if I felt good today, I may not eat until Friday.

Well, that’s not going to happen this week.  I think I might shoot for a 60ish hour fast next week, but I need to get this headache under control so I can go about my day.

What about this Morning?

Ok, what have we here?

This looks suspiciously like the last picture….  But no, it’s different!  At 9:42 last night, when getting into bed, I scanned and had a 97, which was great.  Then this morning, a 98, which is also fantastic!

I like to analyze my trends though…

If you look at the “98” picture closely, you can see that at about 1:30 I had dipped down almost to 70, the bottom of the blue bar, but my body sensed I was going low and released some glycogen/stored fat from my liver to bounce me back up.  

Sometimes our bodies are wonderful things, especially when they work with us!

The key thing about getting your body to work with you is for you to work with it.  I know for many years I fought with my body, it was a war that had no winners, only losers…  well, gainers actually.  I gained a lot of weight by eating foods that were just plain ol’ bad for me! 

For a smart guy, I was pretty stupid actually.

With age comes wisdom.

Headache Medication?

Well, I was hoping that as the day went by that my headache would subside.  It hasn’t, even though I had some food to break my fast.  We had some bad weather come through today, snow, and sometimes that can trigger my headaches.  I’m going to wrap this up so I can get some rest and hopefully knock out this headache for good.

Oh, as a side note, when I got up this morning, and recognized my headache, I took some medication to try to bust it.  I was in the middle, well, closing in on the end of my fast, but regardless, I was fasting.  Since I did not feel 100%, so I took what was needed, and did not worry one bit about whether or not I broke my fast.  I know many people worry about breaking their fast if they put anything other than water, coffee, or tea in their mouth. 

Don’t.  Well, unless you are putting real food in your mouth, but that’s not what I mean…

The stress, and the cortisol released by that stress, is far worse than the effect of taking that medication to make you feel better.  One of the huge advantages of intermittent fasting is the lack of rules related to the lifestyle..  Why would you want to add rules to a lifestyle that is blessedly free of rules… pretty silly I think!

I hope you all have a great day!  My Experiment of One will continue tomorrow!

-Todd

Here are the previous posts in this series….

An Experiment of One plus One

Experiment of One Post 2

Experiment on One Post 3