Sleeping after taking Triptan

Keeps happening.....
If I take a Frova and stay awake it works (I use the word loosely), in 2 to 5 hours.
If......as happened this morning, I fall asleep, it takes longer and works less.

I took it at 8am and dozed off. That was good, because asleep.....no feel pain.
Woke again 9.30, no relief. Dozed off again 10 till 11. I didnt mean to, it has happened.

Now its 3pm and although the pain is gone from 10 to 6, it is still stuck hard in right right top of head to eye, through to neck.
And I still feel side effecty (is that a word?).

Does anyone else on Triptan, particularly Frova notice this please?

Pen

Funny you should mention that Pen - I always thought I imagined it, but my aura symptoms DEFINITELY get worse if I sleep mid-migraine.

I always get the visual crap, take a triptan (currently Zomig spray) then try and sit out the blindness, nausea and vertigo until the pain kicks in. However, if I fall asleep (which my brain often tells me to do) at this point I can guarantee I'll wake up with horrific muscle cramps, pins and needles and aphasia.

So now I try not to sleep during a migraine (unless of course it's a night-migraine) because I know it makes things worse.

LHx

Thank you Liz. I dont get those visual things but otherwise, yes sleeping with migraine....bad news.
I think I am okay once the Triptan has had its 5 hours (nothing doing after that), but isnt that weird?

P

I wonder if it's because sleeping alters the "pattern" of whatever it is the brain has to go through during a migraine.

If I think about it as a computer fail of some kind, or a short circuit, you have to re-boot everything (ie. take a triptan) then wait for all the updates and repairs to take place before everything works properly again. If you put the computer to sleep during this time it would royally screw things up... Maybe brains are a bit like that.

??

I don't know what it is but the Maxalt makes me drowsy but if I fight it off with coffee I do okay.

Sleep in M status - sometimes makes it 100x worse sometimes it helps. Total roll of the dice. Fell asleep yesterday without meaning to and felt a bit better.

Just wish it would make up it's stupid mind so I knew what to do.

Liz, interesting pondering....you may have something....

Becky, I find the inconsistency of migraines the hardest thing next to the actual pain.
Mine alwasy come in two days. BUT, which two days.
I had to take the triptan today as I said.
Day two may be tomorrow, it may be Friday.....

Then I will get a break of 2, 4, 5 or could be 8 days off Triptan
Still pain and medication unless I am lucky, but not migraine..

Im trying to do this trip I mentioned to see my PD friend.
It would be so much easier to risk it if I knew when the break might be.
Better still how about knowing what cause the damn things....

Sorry, better try to sleep, getting ranty.
Night.

Pen,

Triptans don't work very well for me, but to make them work at all I have to take one and then go DIRECTLY to sleep. I wake up nauseous and hung over, but the pain is mostly gone. But 24 hours later (almost exactly) it comes back with worse than before. It is a rotten cycle and they make me tired and stupid. I rarely use them except for the ones that would send me to the ER.

If I don't go to sleep for a few hours while it works I get all of the side effects and non of the relief. Weird.

I think it is funny (funny strange), how similar, yet how different we are. I think Charlotte is right from the Goadsby thread. I think that they will eventually find that this is a bunch of linked syndromes with different causes and different cures.

Mary Anne

Mary Anne,
On al of the other Triptans I had the same effect you describe.
Frova doesnt rebound and if I am not in bed, doesnt make me sleepy.

I have the same theory as Charlotte too.
I do sometimes wonder if they took more notice of the co morbids (as my FB page)
They might find a cure. I think maybe they are making it more complicated than it is.

P

the triptans i take come with a warning that they may cause drowsiness and once theyve worked and the pain as started to ease what a wonderful sleep i have and come out altho in the exhausted stage of the mig im pain free. if i dont sleep at that point the mig will not go. all the 3 different triptan sive been on have all been the same with drowsiness. after that brain has had all that increased activity it does seem only natural that it needds to shut down for a while and rest!!!!

Hi Pen,

I always have to sleep after taking a triptan (maxalt), I just can't function without the sleep.

But I'm not sure if it's the triptan or the migraine itself that makes me sleep.

I'm not about to experiment a migraine without a triptan to find out either!