Last night I went to the gym with my free gym membership (thanks Les Mills!). I was planning on going to a class, but decided that I'd rather do some cardio stuff so I could be a bit gentler on my broken/dislocated/totally munted shoulder.
The gym was great, I spend 20 minutes on the cross trainer warming up (which was freaking hard!). I was in the middle of two women, one had been cross training at 15km/hour for an hour, and the other was going faster than me too and she was quite heavily pregnant! After that, I moved onto the treadmill, with the intention of doing a slow jog for 20 minutes to get back into the whole running thing, and to stretch out my sore legs (yoga the previous night). Unfortunately, I'm pretty competitive and the lady next to me was running faster than me. I upped the speed, and the incline. She bet it. Dammit, we now had an epic battle on our hands. I ended up running just over 30 minutes, finishing up on 12km/h (very very fast for me!) with an incline of 9. My max heart rate when I was training properly was around 195-200, depending on the activity. Last night, my heart rate got up to 202. My chest hurt, but I couldn't give up.
After my 30m on the treadmill, I did 20 minutes on the bike (HR about 180), then back to the cross trainer for another 10m for a cool down. After I finished, I did about 1/2 hour of shoulder/core work. By the time I left the gym, I was feeling pretty awful. I got picked up and had some pizza for dinner. I thought I was feeling so bad because I had only had 2 pieces of toast to eat for the whole day, and it was now 8pm. After a little bit of pizza, I was feeling worse, not better, so decided to go to bed.
Light was hurting my eyes, and I couldn't bear noise. I felt like my head was going to explode and I felt like puking. I consulted twitter, some people by text, and phoned my mum. Apparently, this was a migraine. They run in my family - I'm the only one who doesn't (didn't?). Apparently, the only thing I could do was sleep it off, and hope I didn't puke my guts out. It's 2010, and we don't have treatment for these? Insane.
I'm still in two minds whether is was caused by stressing my body too much, or if it was an actual migraine. I hope it wasn't a real migraine, especially if it means that this is going to be on ongoing thing.
I still don't feel 100% today, but I feel much better than last night. I slept for about 15 hours too, which must have helped!
It does sound consistent with my experiences with migraines.
ReplyDeleteI've found that migraines are often triggered by things, sometimes random things I'm completely unaware of; but if I miss a meal and then do strenuous exercise, it's pretty much a guaranteed way to get a migraine.
But yeah - migraines are also treatable, if not curable. The first line of treatment (disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, I just talk to doctors and have personal experience) is taking painkillers as soon as you think you might be getting a migraine. Painkillers mixed with anti-nausea drugs are meant to work better - I think this is to do with the fact that migraines cause your body/digestive system to slow down, sort of, which means drugs are absorbed a lot slower and hence less effectice, and anti-nausea drugs counteract this a bit.
There's also a class of drugs called triptans which are really good for stopping migraines if you take them early enough. I think sumatriptan is the best, but I take rizatriptan because I can't swallow pills and it's magical and dissolve-y. I've found that they turn the migraine from pain+othersymptoms into just othersymptoms, and that I still have to drop whatever I'm doing and sleep for twelve hours, but it also means I'm completely functional and pain-free the next day. YMMV.
Very rambly comment is very rambly.. basically, if it happens again, see your doctor? They have drugs which can help to some extent, and this is good.