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I am having a migraine.

A sentence we hear too often than we would like to these days. Today, let me provide you with all the necessary information you need, to finally get some real help if you have been a silent sufferer for too long.

‘Migraine’ is a common disabling primary headache disorder. A migraine is a bit more complex than a normal headache. Most people have headaches from time to time. These are known as ‘tension headaches.’ Read on to find out how these two are completely unrelated.

Risk factors

Family history: Having a family member with migraines (usually female) increases your likelihood of developing them.
Age: Migraines can strike at any age, though the first often occurs at adolescence. Migraines tend to peak during your 30s, and gradually become less severe and frequent as age advances.
Sex: Women are thrice more likely to have migraines. A headache tends to affect boys more than girls during childhood, but by the time of puberty, more girls are affected.
Hormonal changes: If you are a woman who has migraines, you may find that your headaches frequent around the time of menstruation. They may also change during pregnancy or menopause. Migraines generally improve after menopause. Some women complain that migraine attacks begin during pregnancy, or their attacks worsen. Many reported that the attacks improved or didn’t occur during later stages in the pregnancy. Some migraines often return post-delivery.

Symptoms

Migraines begin in childhood, adolescence, or early adulthood.

Migraines generally progress over four stages: prodrome, aura, headache, and post-drome, although all patients may not always experience all four stages.

1. Prodrome:

24 hours or up to two days before a migraine, you may notice few changes that warn of an upcoming migraine, including:

Mood swings
Constipation
Severe food cravings
Neck stiffness
Increased thirst
Increased urination
Frequent tiredness

2. Aura: the “warning sign”

Aura may occur before or during migraines. Most people experience migraines without aura.

Auras are symptoms of the nervous system. They are usually visual disturbances, such as flashes of light or wavy, zigzag vision.

Sometimes auras can be of any type: sensory (sensations), motor (movements) or verbal (speech) disturbances. Your muscles may get weak, or you may feel as though someone is touching you.

Each of these symptoms usually begins gradually, builds up over several minutes and lasts for few minutes to 60 minutes. Examples of migraine aura include:

Seeing shapes, bright spots, or flashes of light
Vision loss
Pins and needles sensations in an arm or leg
Weakness/numbness in the face or one side of the body
Difficulty speaking
Hearing noises or music
Uncontrollable jerking or other movements, etc

3. The Attack:

A migraine usually lasts from 4 to 72 hours if untreated. The frequency with which headaches occur varies from one person to another. Migraines may be rare or might occur several times a month. During a migraine, you may feel:

Pain on either side or both sides of your head
Pain that feels throbbing or pulsating
Sensitivity to light, sounds, and sometimes smells and touch
Nausea and vomiting
Blurred vision
Light-headedness, sometimes followed by fainting

4. post-drome

The final phase occurs after the attack. You may feel washed out, while some people feel ecstatic. For about 24 hours, you may also experience:

Confusio
Moodiness
Dizziness
Weakness
Sensitivity to light or sound

Causes

Exact causes remain unknown but research points to strong correlations between genetics/environmental factors and migraines.

Some factors called “triggers” have been studied and isolated which may be the reason to induce an “attack”.

Migraine Triggers

Hormonal changes in women: Women with migraines often report headaches before or during their periods, when they have a major drop in estrogen. Also, there is increased tendency to develop migraines during pregnancy or menopause. Hormonal medications, such as oral contraceptive pills and hormone replacement therapy may worsen migraines. Some women find their migraines occur less often when taking these medications.
Foods: Aged cheeses, salty foods and processed foods may trigger migraines. Skipping meals in between the day or hypoglycemia can trigger attacks.
Food additives: The sweetener aspartame and the preservative monosodium glutamate (MSG) may trigger migraines.
Drinks: Alcohol, especially wine, and highly caffeinated beverages may trigger migraines.
Stress: Stress at work or home can cause migraines.
Sensory stimuli: Bright lights and sun glare can induce migraines, as can loud sounds. Strong smells including perfume, paint thinner, second-hand smoking trigger migraines in some people.
Changes in wake-sleep pattern: Missing sleep or getting too much sleep may trigger migraines in some people, as can jet lag.
Physical factors: Intense physical exertion, including sexual activity, may provoke migraines.
Changes in the environment: Changes in weather and barometric pressures can prompt a migraine as well.
Medications: Oral contraceptives, blood pressure & cardiovascular medications, can aggravate migraines.

When do I see a doctor?

Sad truth remains that migraines are often undiagnosed and untreated. If you regularly experience symptoms, keep a record of your migraine attacks and triggers and how you treat them. Then meet your doctor to discuss your headaches.

Even if you have a history of headaches, see your doctor if there is a sudden change in pattern of your headaches. See your doctor immediately or go to the emergency room if you have any of the following signs and symptoms, which may indicate an Emergency:

An abrupt, severe headache like a thunderclap.
Headache with high fever, chills, stiffness in neck, mental confusion, seizures, double vision, weakness, numbness or trouble speaking.
Headache after a head injury, especially if the headache gets worse.
A chronic headache that is worse after coughing, exertion, straining or a sudden movement.
New headaches if you’re older than 50.

So you have everything in place, shoulders, Chest, Arms, Back, Abs and Even your Quadriceps and Hamstrings.

But one thing which simply refuses to grow, no matter what you do are your Calf Muscles.

So what do you do? Are you the kind of person who is really frustrated looking at your calf muscles?

If so, then this article is for you.

This article will primarily focus on breaking the plateau of your calves.

Let me give you 5 tips or ways by which you can improve your calf’s musculature, but before that let us know about the major calf muscles

There are two major calf muscles named Gastrocnemius and Soleus as shown below. Both of them combined is called as Tricep Surae.

The tip here is, if you want to grow your Gastrocnemius, do your calf exercises with knees locked out or in simple words, keep your knees NOT bent. To grow and target your Soleus Muscle, Keep your knees Unlocked or rather just keep your knees bent during your calf exercises.

Without further ado, let’s see 5 different ways to break your calf plateau.

1. Rep Ranges and the timing of your calf workouts

So are you one of those who always does his/her calf workouts after doing all the leg workouts and still not getting any output?

Try this. Begin your leg workout session with a calf workouts. Go hard in your very first exercise when you are still fresh and less fatigued.

So should I always do high repetitions in my calf workouts? No.

Gastrocnemius is majorly a Fast twitch muscle fiber which responds better to lower reps and heavier weights.

Soleus is majorly a slow twitch muscle fiber which responds better to more reps and lesser weights.

In fact, there is a research which says that muscle protein synthesis of Soleus muscle is very poor when they are put under micro trauma using the same number of sets and reps which you would do with other body parts.

That surely means, you cannot train the soleus muscle the way you train your other body parts.

2. Train them Often

Many people make a mistake of training their calves just once a week.

The calf muscles recover very soon and there is no point in waiting for 6 more days to train them.

I would say train them twice or even thrice a week.

3. Best Exercise for your calves

This is debatable, but let me list down best exercise for each calf muscle

a) Smith Machine Calf Raises or Standing Machine Calf Raises:

This is hands down the best exercise according to me for your Gastrocnemius.

Go heavy here and keep the rep ranges 8-10. Tip here is to lock your knees out and not let it bend.

If it’s bending during your movement, probably the weight is too heavy.

Never ever bounce the weight here. Many people do the mistake of bouncing the weight off which can potentially lead to an injury to your Achilles tendon.

Do the movement being in control.

You can add some elevation under your feet for better muscle contraction.

b) Seated Calf Raises

This primarily targets your Soleus muscle.

You can go for higher repetitions here like say 20-25.

If your gym doesn’t have seated calf raises machine, you can improvise smith machine or DB calf raises

Only Perform Dumbbell/Smith machine calf raises for Soleus, if seated calf raises option is not available.

When you are performing DB/Smith machine calf raises, very important is to make sure not to lock your knees out and keep a slight bent, so that the micro trauma happens right at your soleus muscle.

Irrespective of your number of repetitions, always add more number of sets, i.e. more Volume.

4. Smith Machine Calf Raises or Standing Machine Calf Raises

If you are training your calves for years and still don’t see any improvement, one way to shock your muscle fibers is to perform BFR training for your calves.

BFR training has shown to improve and promote muscle growth is multiple researches even without lifting crazy amount of weights. It has also shown to increase your GH by 290 times above your baseline.

5. Break the Rules:

Now if you are one of those who tried all the above four methods and still cannot see your calf grow even if your nutrition and your patience level is on point. Then the time has come to break some conventional rules.

As opposed to what I mentioned in the first point, try doing something different here.

Select a day on which you have planned your calf workout, start your exercise session with a calf workout but go crazy here with the amount of sets you will do. You can try this at the end of the workouts too.

For example, try doing 30 sets here for each calves. Say 15 for Gastrocnemius and 15 for soleus.

Go for heavier weights and lesser reps for first 7-8 sets and in rest of the sets go for very light weights and reps till failure. The idea is to traumatize your calf to the core.

Try this once a week, and other day of the week you can carry on with the regular calf workouts and watch your calf muscles grow like crazy.

Still have any doubts. Visit Fittr and get in touch with our fitness coaches who can help you to achieve your goals.

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Author: Fittr

Migraine: The New Age Pandemic