Migraine Art The Experience from Within

19 December 2012

Two Books that Should be on Every Migraineur’s Coffee Table

If you could only choose two books to have on your coffee table, or to have handy when company comes over, what would they be? Here are my two suggestions for migraineurs:

Migraine Expressions: A Creative Journey through Life with Migraine: Migraine Expressions is really designed to be a coffee table type book. It’s a large, colourful, beautifully designed hardcover.

Many people don’t understand the impact of migraine disease, and what a large community migraineurs make up. They don’t understand how migraine destroys life, and how much migraineurs want to fight back.

This book will give your guests quick pictures to look at that illustrate the agony of migraine, but it will also give them poems and prose to read if they’re relaxing for the evening. (Full review here. Migraine Expressions is available at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk.)
Migraine Art: The Migraine Experience from Within: At first this may sound like the same kind of book. And yes, both books are filled with full colour art showing migraine symptoms and the impact of migraine.
So why would you want both?

Migraine Art comes from a very different perspective than Migraine Expressions. Migraine Expressions gives a voice to the migraine community. Migraine Art, on the other hand, is scientific research.

If your friends think you’re the only one who has your crazy symptoms, they’re in for a surprise.

First, they’ll find the names of two doctors on the cover – Dr. Klaus Podoll (a physician and researcher) wrote the book along with Derek Robinson (long time migraine art expert). Plus there’s a forward by Dr. Oliver Sacks, famous for his migraine research and the work that became known to the world in the movie Awakenings.

Next, your friends will see page after page of documented, researched symptoms of migraine. They’ll see fascinating illustrations in each category. They will find out that most likely some people have symptoms even more strange than yours. (What is the strangest symptom, anyway? That may be a topic for another post!)

This is a medical reference book, so not for casual reading. But the scientific aspect is what makes it so different and valuable. At the same time it’s easy enough to flip through that your guests will find it interesting.

(Full review here. Available at amazon.com and amazon.co.uk)

One more note. Because of the topic, these books are at times harsh and graphic in their art and descriptions. So it may not be a book you’ll want your neighbour’s 6 year old flipping through.

But if you really want your friends to understand migraine, sometimes you have to be blunt. These books can do the work for you.

5 January 2010

Migraine and Out of Body Experiences

James Information 31

A relationship between migraine and out of body experiences? Really?

You may be wondering if I’m serious – or if I’m that desperate for topics that I’m reaching for some that are a bit on the bizarre side.

The truth is, no, I’m not in any way at a loss for things to write about. I’ve chosen this one on purpose – I am serious, and I have a feeling there are a number of migraineurs out there that are thankful someone is talking about this.

Our of Body Experiences – a Symptom of Migraine?

It has been known for some time that out of body experiences, or OBEs, are a possible symptom of migraine. This is not to say that all OBEs can be attributed to migraine. But I have a hunch (and I’m not the only one) that this symptom is more common than we think – that it’s under reported.

I was recently reading a discussion of migraine and OBEs from the 80s. And back in 1999, Derek Robinson and Dr. Klaus Podoll suggested that OBEs were a migraine symptom, based on their observations of migraine art (see Out-of-body experiences and related phenomena in migraine art.). An example of this migraine art can be seen online here.

And as they demonstrated in their recent book Migraine Art, this doesn’t just come from observations of the art but from testimonies of patients themselves. In fact, they list 17 medical case reports (about 70% female, 30% male, between the ages of 17 and 66) of out-of-body and related experiences in migraine patients. Most of these patients had repeated OBEs.

Under reported?

Why this would be under reported is obvious. As one patient put it:

I have never told anyone else, as I have not wanted to be called or thought of as queer, and even a supposedly understanding doctor might lift his eyebrows at some of the happenings of a migraine victim, who learns to keep things strictly to herself, excluding both family and physician from her confidence.
-from Hallucinations of physical duality in migraine by Dr. Caro W Lippman, quoted in Migraine Art.

What is an Out-of-Body experience?

You probably already know that there’s a lot of controversy about what exactly OBEs are. There’s those who believe the soul actually leaves the body, of course, but there is also a great deal of discussion in the medical community about what may be going on neurologically – physically – in the brain.

Because hallucinations of various kinds are common in migraine attacks, a strong theory is that there is a relationship between migraine and OBEs, and that these OBEs are another type of hallucination coming from memory and imagination.

But we’re putting a lot under this category – let’s look at how some patients described their symptoms (mostly from the book Migraine Art):

the feeling of my transparent body leaving my physical body
toward early morning I woke up, and instead of being in bed I was suspended in the air halfway toward the ceiling. I looked on the bed and saw myself lying asleep
one patient reported the extraordinary sensation of being drawn out horizontally through a small hole in the centre of the skull
Some patients are simply aware of the presence of an invisible double
One male patient says, suddenly I would become aware of a ‘second self,’ vaguer than and more tenuous than the original ‘me.’ I felt just like a double exposure looks.
Like I’ll feel like my hands are at my sides, but they’re folded in my lap. It’s real bad when I feel like I’m sideways, but I’m sitting up in my chair. (quoted here)

Sometimes these experiences last a split second, sometimes longer. Sometimes they happen in bed, sometimes while going about normal daily activities.

And this doesn’t even take into account other bodily hallucinations felt by migraineurs – for example, the awareness of another ‘presence’ in the room, or the feeling that one part of your body has ‘stretched’, or that your head is actually splitting open, and so on and so on. There are so many variations it’s hard to know how to categorize them.

But is it really a migraine symptom?

We don’t know – and the reason is that many people report OBEs, and many people are migraineurs. You would expect that there would be overlap. Also, is the OBE actually a symptom of migraine, or a symptom coming from a common cause? And what part does medication play?

But there are good arguments in favour of considering OBEs a real migraine symptom. For example:

Hallucinations of various kinds are very common in migraine
OBEs in migraine patients often go along with other better-known symptoms of a migraine attack. In other words, the OBE comes along at the same time as the attack, and often is intertwined with other symptoms.

Why this article is here

We’re talking about this today because

It shows once again how unique migraine symptoms can be
We need to get this information out in the open because people do need to talk to their doctors about it.
There are some of you out there with these symptoms who are afraid to share with anyone – you’re not alone.
For those that have these symptoms, you need to know there is research being done. This is not an unheard of symptom, although we certainly understand very little about it.

So please share your comments and thoughts if you’re willing – let’s learn more about this aspect of migraine, which may be more common than most people think…

21 November 2009

Migraine Art: The Migraine Experience from Within (review)

James Resources 0

It may not be obvious to everyone why Migraine Art: The Migraine Experience from Within is such an important book. But this magnum opus from Klaus Podoll and Derek Robinson is a key to migraine research that has been a long time coming.

I’ve been dealing with migraine symptoms for well over 20 years. I’ve read countless pages of research, and innumerable experiences from migraine and headache sufferers from around the world.

Even after all that, there’s still more to learn about our symptoms. Sometimes we ourselves don’t realize consciously what we’re experiencing – maybe because it’s become so "normal". Or we fail to realize how different someone else’s symptoms are, assuming everyone is like us.

That’s one reason why migraine art is so powerful. When we don’t know how to put things into words, sometimes we can relay information more completely through art. The works in Migraine Art that have been collected over many years tell us a story that we rarely get from research and statistics.

Our understanding of the brain has come a long way in the last 20 years. But in some ways, what we’ve learned has brought up more questions than answers. Migraine art has given us a glimpse into the brain that no scan can yet give us.

For example, in 1941, US neuroscientist Karl S. Lashley amazingly predicted the concept of the concept of cortical spreading depression, by drawing and timing his own visual aura experiences. This idea of the "brain storm" that impacts migraine is one of the most modern theories of how migraine works.

Throughout this beautiful book of full colour pages, Podoll and Robinson analyze migraine art that demonstrates not only various symptoms, but also triggers, and even how migraine impacts life in general.

You may not see the same statistics here that you’ll see in other research. The point is not to give an overview of all migraine research, but instead to see migraine in the light of the art. However, the book is carefully foot noted and connected to research, again making it an important contribution not just to patients but to the researchers and medical professionals as well.

If you want to understand your own symptoms better, and those of others, there are few books that will offer more insight. This is the work on migraine art from the top experts in the field, based on many years of careful research.

You may be wondering how Migraine Art differs from the also excellent Migraine Expressions: A Creative Journey through Life with Migraine. Migraine Expressions is also a colourful book full of migraine art, but it also includes poetry and prose. It’s focused simply on the works of patients, and is easy to pick up and flip through.

Migraine Art: The Migraine Experience from Within is a more scholarly work. It’s more focused on specific symptoms and their expression in art, and goes into detail about what the art means. It’s emphasis is on pictures (more than 300 of them!), not writing (although it includes descriptions of the art by migraineurs). You’ll learn much more about the history and use of migraine art, and symptoms you’ve probably never heard discussed other places.

Don’t take this book to be the end-all of migraine research. On the other hand, if you want to get an intimate glimpse of migraine from a unique perspective, I highly recommend this book. It’s also a must have for serious researchers – a work unlike any other that will be valued for years to come.

Migraine Art thus stands as the definitive work of its kind–an incomparable collection of material on the visual and other phenomena of migraine, and, by implication, on the brain processes which underlie these. It will serve to reassure, enlighten, and inspire…
– Dr. Oliver Sacks, from the Forward

Migraine Art: The Migraine Experience from Within now available here