Middle of the night migraines

I've been waking up in the middle of the night with migraines.

I have really unpleasant dreams involving suffocation and illness and wake up with sleep paralysis and realize I am really nauseous, the room is spinning and I feel like I have the flu with a bad headache. It's a migraine.

I have to get up and move around top dispel the sleep paralysis. It really wrecks my sleeping. I end up staying up a few hours in a recliner until the migraine symptoms settle down enough that I can go back to sleep.

I was always told by my doctor that you can't get a migraine while you sleep and this used to be true for me - I would sometimes get one as soon as I got up in the morning but never while I was still in bed.

Am I the only one?

-Pete

i have written about this at length in the past...i've been on this forum for 18 years now.

when my M's began 46 years ago, they ALWAYS woke me up at 4 a.m.  one could almost set the clock by them.  and though i didn't have symptoms similar to yours, i could never go back to sleep because of the intense pain.

no doctor/neuro/practitioner has ever been able to figure out why this is.  but just because they don't know, no one should say "that can't happen".  that's nuts.  

go change doctors asap.  you are definitely not the only one.  dianne

How can someone say you can't get a migraine in the middle of the night? Really? I wake up almost every night somewhere between 3 and 5. This morning it was 4:06. And they are excruciating, and I wake up sometimes with a jolt like someone kicked me in the head. Then it's painkillers, coffee and ice packs so I can try and get out the door for work. I wonder why anyone would think it's not possible to get a migraine at night. I wish!

Sorry to hear about your pain. I hope you can find some relief. - Cathy

Have you had a sleep study?

It doesn't happen to me often (and not with all the other symptoms you have), but I sometimes wake with a migraine. I didn't for several years, though.

I suggest you see a migraine specialist. I think general practitioners don't often know a lot about migraines. I spent over a decade thinking I didn't even have migraines.

For most of my life, my migraines have hit between 4 and 6 a.m. Now that I am older, migraines can come at about any other time of day or night, but for the most part, the pain begins whenever I open my eyes in the morning.

In Dr. Oliver Sacks' book, Migraine, he says he believes people who awake with migraines probably have auras while they're sleeping--which would explain why many people think they don't have auras at all. They probably do have auras, but they just sleep through them, according to Sacks. I never thought I had auras, either, but in the past 10 years or so, I've had maybe five auras. Thing is, I have never had a migraine after an aura, so I'm not sure Sacks' theory holds with me.

I mention all that so you can tell your doctor that a premier migraine researcher (Sacks) has a differing opinion.

Ouch, waking up with a migraine is the worst feeling ever. It's bad enough getting one during the day, but at least then you can sometimes feel it coming and get prepared for it. I also get migs in the night, but mostly it is when I have gone to bed with one and it hasn't cleared yet. Our 5 year old son has type 1 diabeties so my wife and I take it in turns to test him at 2am and that is the killer time for me because my sleeping pattern is being disturbed.

I hope you manage to get closer to resolving the problem. And you know where we all are if you need a chat!