The Preface of The Migraine Solutions

A girl at the age of three….Constantly throwing up, feeling so bad, lying down without asking anything from anyone….This is how my childhood started.

Listening to my patients, I feel like my heart is still stuck as in my childhood. I remember my days with migraine. While writing this book, rather than remembering the past, I relived the past. The first period of my profession came to my mind. Having a splitting headache, what could I say to the patients before me talking about their headaches? The only thing that I could do was to try to dissimulate. As you can imagine, I suffered a lot from migraines.

In 2004 after learning ‘neural therapy’ approach, my whole life changed so much. Firstly, I managed to cope with my own headaches and above all I found a way to solve migraine. I was listening to the patients with all details, taking notes, solving possible causes I thought of, taking notes of the changes in the patient once again; in one sense listening to the sense of pain and placing all these datas in a mathematical algorithm. Getting the same results repeatedly in smilar patient groups, I determined the cause for that group. The solutions I develeoped within time enabled me to start the writing process of this book.

Migraine and headaches are lifetime problems overwhelming first the patient and those around him so much so that the patient is tired of mentioning he has a headache and his relatives are tired of hearing it. Pain vicious cycle leads to many problems in work and social life: Sadness, anger, depression, negligence of children and spouse, reducing social relationships, loss of work and prestige, continous fatigue, unwillingness, anxiety, helplessness, frustration…

The leading cause of labour loss is migraine and headaches. In that case, there should be numerous academies, foundations and organizations to solve migraines. Unfortunately, the number of them are very limited. At least half of the patients a neurologist has seen at the clinic throughout his career have complained of headaches. A significant part of neurology training should be on headaches; but I don’t remember us doing an extensive study on migraine in my medical assisting experience.

It seems that everyone is fed up with this issue and desperate. We see that the scientific studies carried out for migraine solution have not proceeded very far. Currently migraine is one of the diseases whose causes are unidentified. So, what is the problem? Let’s think about it together. In medicine, there are some basic rules for developing scientific research and new treatments. The first rule is ‘Primum non nocere’ namely ‘First do not harm’.

‘Aude sapere’ which means ‘Dare to know’ is my second rule. ‘Have the courage to use your own reason’ (Aude sapere, Dimidum facti qui coepit habet) was first used by Horace and identified with the Age of Enlightenment and Kant. With his saying ‘Since we have this gift, reason and free thought that God has granted us why we don’t use it?’, Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, did groundbreaking works in medicine. And Hahnemann has this basic principle ‘Aude sapere’ at the entrance of his school and in his book ‘The Organon of the Healing Art’ which he wrote 200 years ago. This valuable scientist who made me realize the fact of ‘getting sick’ says:

“The real art of healing is a serious, thought provoking job. It depends on man’s mind, free thought and intelligence which chooses and makes decisions based on logical reasons. Healing by eliminating the material cause of the disease –causa morbi- is a common approach in medicine. Since most of the time, the disease cannot be cured with this approach, symptoms of the disease is suppressed with medication. This method which lacks common sense is called symptomatic treatment. So in short term it conciliates the patient and in long term facilitates death. This is not real healing.”

The treatment of migraine cannot be successful precisely for this reason. There is no orientation to the real cause of migraine. In the beginning I also used to work with the approach of symptomatic treatment. After meeting with neural therapy, I developed solutions based on causes and started to practice the art of true healing. I regard myself very lucky to be able to work this way.

It is difficult to deal with patients with migraines and headaches; like I always said a reasonable person wouldn’t put effort into it like I do. But the words of Albert Schweitzer might help expressing my effort.

Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Peace Prize winner, German-born humanitarian and medical doctor says, “The one who has been delivered from pain must not think he or she is now free again, and at liberty to take life up just as it was before, entirely forgetful of the past. Such a person is now “one whose eyes are open” with regard to pain and anguish, and he or she must help to overcome those two enemies (as far as human power can control them) and bring to others the deliverance which he or she has enjoyed” calling this “The Fellowship of Those Who Bear the Mark of Pain”.

Reading these words in Prof. Dr. Serdar Erdine’s book called ‘The Book of Pain’, I saw the similarity with my feelings. Since with each patient I was reliving my own migraine experience, with each cluster headache patient, I remembered my father, with each patient whose pain was persistent, I was overwhelmed, with each patient having a smile on his face, I also got better.

In the end, we have been recovered and become happy together. Now I know that my continous effort of many years to solve migraine is based on “the fellowship of those who suffer from pyhsical pain”.

In some of the stories you read in this book, you will find your own headaches and in some of the others you will think your headache is more tolerable than the others’. Reading this book, you will say “Fortunately, there is a cure.” Even if you are not a migraineur, you will better understand migraneurs around you.

Best of all, you will be able to realize the privilege of being a migraineur. Many philosophers, writers, artists and scientists in history were migraineurs. The best known examples are Charles Darwin, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Hildegard von Bingen, Lewis Carroll, Virginia Woolf, Stephen King…

My author friend Neşe Turan once asked, “Dostoyevsky told that epilepsy crises increased his creativity; do migraine attacks also give rise to consciousness?” She was right. As well as giving rise to consciousness, being a migraineur also brings along detail oriented thinking, the ability to see details, -possibly because of suffering- to see life differently and to be patient.

On one hand, being a migraineur myself has played a very big role in better understanding what my patients have been going through and on the other hand in analyzing the very complicated datas of my patients and solving the real reason of migraine by dealing with details obsessively.

For my writing to contribute to the solution of migraine and headaches…

to create a new perspective in people’s minds

Together, let’s say ‘Aude sapare’ (Think with free mind, dare to know).