My insomnia stems from the night terrors. I simply don't, sometimes,
wish to go asleep, and am not able to convince myself to try until i'm exhausted. Most people who have insomnia wish to sleep but can't.
From what i learned from the websites on nightmares and night terrors that cdmohatta and i linked (where was that thread?)... there are different causes of insomnia, and because of that, sometimes different treatments are recommended. One of the sites said that sleep and ...oh what do you call it? ...like Prozac... medication is not recommended for people with night terrors. I don't want to take any anyway. I have talked to people who have taken it... and they have liked it for them... but their situation is a little different from mine, and my body is very sensitive to medications, too, and often i get quite serious health side effects. For example, anti-biotics tend to shut my kidneys down and can even be life-threatening to me. I think in my case, i need to work on the night terrors issue, and then the insomnia will disappear as consequence.
I do have a couple of suggestions for migraines, though. I used to suffer from them regularly, and i've had several friends who suffer. I've found a way of greatly reducing mine. I did some reading about them which was very helpful (just Google "migraines" to learn about treatments and trigger foods) and i learned that in a regular headache, your blood vessles contract, but in a migraine, they expand... which may be why we become disturbingly oversensitive to light and sound and motion. Obviously, this means some treatments for headaches will not work for migraines. The most common trigger common to all sufferers of migraines is sinus congestion. I found that my migraines were often partly triggered by a cold weather front which exaserbates sinus infections. But they wouldn't occur if a sinus infection and a cold front were the only thing present. For me, i also almost always was premenstral or had just begun menstrating at the time, i was overtired, stressed, dehydrated, and had eaten trigger foods... for me the trigger foods are food preservatives, coffee, chocolate, and avocados. Now, if i see some of my triggers lining up, and can avoid trigger foods, get rest, and drink LOTS of water, and that will allow me to avoid a migraine. Now i only get a migraine if i fail to take care of myself when i see the triggers lining up.
It will be somewhat different for other people, but the most common triggers include sinus congestion, stress, and trigger foods. If after your migraine passes you keep a journal record of what you had eaten and other factors leading up to your migraine, you will soon be able to learn what situations you need to avoid. I think in most cases it is cummulative. For example... i don't
always need to avoid coffee, chocolate, avocados and preservatives... only when i have a sinus headache beginning. Thank God! What would i do without chocolate???? hahaha
