I'm glad you shared this - I also have light triggered migraines and I didn't realize there were so many others who also did. :) huh! I take ibuprofen and two shots of espresso and lock myself in a dark room and do deep breathing/relaxation -- the latter seems to have been surprisingly helpful for me in the last few years, and makes me wonder if my anxiety response to having the initial aura was actually contributing to worsening the migraine.
My favorite episode was when I went to my doctor, said "yeah, it's good, I haven't had a migraine for like 6 months", and as part of the physical he shined a pen light in my eyes ... and I went home and developed a migraine. sigh.
(Fortunately, some time in my 20s, I stopped getting the headache part for the most part and now just have aura -- which renders me partly unable to see, alas -- and feeling pretty off for a while.)
There are OTC meds you can buy that are marketed as "migraine relief" that are just acetaminophen + caffeine; my wife takes that and it usually works to relieve the symptoms (if she can catch it early enough).
Of course, then you take away the espresso - there's always a trade-off :)
Have you tried cold brew? It has about 10x the caffeine of an espresso shot. Espresso has the least amount of a caffeine of coffee drinks. Cold water and long exposure extracts more caffeine than hot water and short exposure. Source: I’m a coffee nerd.
The difference isn't typically that vast. At usual dilution levels, drinking a 16oz cold brew would be slight caffeine gain on the double-shot. Heat does extract caffeine better that cold, which is why the shot is prepared in ≈25 seconds and the cold brew concentrate takes 12-20 hours.
Also, I don't keep cold brew on hand during the winter, but I can whip up a double espresso in under a minute and get ~150mg of caffeine, which is basically equal to my daily intake. And I can _consume_ it faster than trying to chug a 16oz cup of cold brew. Gulp, done. :) And yummy.
I could take the excedrin-style things but coffee is pretty easy. And the goal isn't "max caffeine", the goal is 150-250mg.
The funny thing is that I really have no idea if this caffeine+ibuprofen routine is actually effective. One of my doctors in grad school suggested it, as someone who also suffered aura-only migraines. He said it worked for him, and I figured that either it was sometimes effective, or I'd have some placebo action working for me, so I just adopted it. :) I'm OK with placebo if it's working. The caffeine is based on an older theory of vasoconstriction that seems to not be aligned with the modern thinking on migraines, but, eh, mine are pretty tame compared to what some people get so I haven't felt the need to work too hard to optimize this.
My favorite episode was when I went to my doctor, said "yeah, it's good, I haven't had a migraine for like 6 months", and as part of the physical he shined a pen light in my eyes ... and I went home and developed a migraine. sigh.
(Fortunately, some time in my 20s, I stopped getting the headache part for the most part and now just have aura -- which renders me partly unable to see, alas -- and feeling pretty off for a while.)