Weather update

10:45 am. Outside it's over 36 degrees. Inside my head hurts slightly and I'm nauseous. It's a "yucky" migraine this time, not a "painful head" one. I go home to take a pill - I'll decide in another two hours whether to continue working at a reduced pace or go home to sleep.

19:45 update. Well, I took my pill, and by noon, there wasn't much nausea left. On the other hand, the pill had made me so sleepy that I couldn't concentrate on my work. So I went home, took another pill and slept an uneasy sleep for a few hours. Whilst asleep, I had some weird dreams, like deciding to record a version of "The Long Medley" from The Beatles' "Abbey Road"; that's how I know I was sleeping. Sometime after 3pm I awoke, but I was still zombie-like for a few hours.

Now I'm fine, but I wonder whether it's better to take these pills thus killing the migraine but causing side effects, or better not to take them and just suffer the pain. Neither route seems good, but I think that the first wins on points as it's better to be a zombie for a few hours than suffer excrutiating pain for the same length of time.

Incidentally, I think that these pills are OTC (over the counter) - one doesn't need a doctor's prescription for them. It makes one wonder that such pills with their side effects are legal, whereas marijuana is not. And again incidentally, the pills are much cheaper with a prescription; such is also the case with my stomach pills, which are three times more expensive OTC than they are with a prescription. On the other hand, paracetamol is actually cheaper OTC, although the difference is minor.

I wonder how these pills actually work. Most painkillers (to take an extreme example, morphine) work by attaching themselves to receptors on nerve cells and thus reducing the amount of 'network traffic' (to use a computer metaphor), meaning that one doesn't feel any pain. As this is their mode of action, they obviously don't have any effect on what is causing the pain.

These migraine pills also effect nerve cell receptors, but they also seem to reduce the duration of the migraine. Maybe the paracetamol has some effect on dilated blood vessels (which are what causes a certain amount of pain).

OK: enough on health matters. The next post should be about music.