Why Kristin Chenoweth Makes use of Botox as Power Migraine Remedy

Kristin Chenoweth obtained her first migraine at age 25, and she or he remembers it vividly. The Broadway legend was onstage performing on the Virginia Symphony, “singing my face off,” she tells SheKnows. Then, about midway by Act One, “I began seeing flashing lights like an aura. It was nearly just like the highlight began it.”

Then got here the nausea and the pounding headache, “like a jackhammer on my head.” When the curtain got here down for intermission, Chenoweth vomited and needed to be helped to her room by the conductor. She made it by Act Two “by the grace of God,” Chenoweth remembers, then spent the subsequent three days in her lodge, sitting in silence with the lights off. “I used to be so sick,” she remembers. “And that started my odyssey with migraine.”

Migraines have an effect on 40 million individuals within the US, and of these, 4 million expertise power migraine — having 15 or extra days with complications a month, in accordance with Dr. Hope O’Brien, neurologist and Founder and CEO of Headache Middle of Hope. Migraines additionally have an effect on 3 times extra ladies than males. “[Chronic migraine] is having a headache just about day by day, with 4 or extra hours in ache or with signs,” O’Brien tells SheKnows. “It’s a severe situation and sadly, is below acknowledged below recognized and for a lot of ladies who’ve it, ignored.”

For Chenoweth, power migraines have been extremely painful and disruptive. She would expertise flashing lights (often called an aura), a ringing in her ears, nausea, and the pounding headache. “It’s so excruciating,” Chenoweth says. Her continuous life-style as a performer didn’t assist. “I fly so much for my job,” she stated, itemizing her triggers. “Food regimen, all of the belongings you hear about: stress, anxiousness, sleep. I used to be getting them at first round what felt like my menstrual cycle. After which typically they’d be clusters, like three a month… nevertheless it was simply taking place increasingly more as I obtained older.”

It obtained so unhealthy that Chenoweth significantly thought of giving up her dream profession. “I used to be gonna need to retire,” the unique Depraved star says. On the time, utilizing Botox as a remedy for power migraine was “simply beginning,” Chenoweth remembers, and her physician really useful she attempt it as a last-ditch effort.

“I did it, and I’ve not seemed again,” says Chenoweth, who’s partnered with pharmaceutical firm AbbVie to advertise Botox as power migraine remedy.

Botox is a chemical that’s injected into muscle groups to briefly forestall them from shifting. You could be accustomed to Botox for beauty use, which entails injecting it into facial muscle groups to clean wrinkles, nevertheless it’s additionally used to deal with circumstances like neck spasms, overactive bladder, and power migraines, per Mayo Clinic. For power migraine sufferers specifically, Dr. O’Brien stated, Botox is injected “into seven muscle groups within the head and neck,” sometimes each three months for adults.

The Botox remedy helped Chenoweth lower the frequency her migraines, which have been coming a number of instances a month, right down to nearly nothing. “I very hardly ever have them. It’s been a pair years,” says Chenoweth.

For a situation that impacts predominantly ladies, each Chenoweth and O’Brien emphasize the significance of advocating for your self to get high quality migraine care. “What I might say to ladies is to speak to their healthcare supplier, don’t allow them to ignore you,” O’Brien says. “Power migraine is a treatable situation.”

And whereas therapies like Botox can be found, life-style modifications may assist. “I’m not an enormous alcohol drinker, and I feel that most likely helps,” Chenoweth says. She additionally watches the sodium in her weight loss plan, stays hydrated, and prioritizes sleep as she will on a busy schedule. “It’s simply so necessary that that [migraine] sufferers preserve only a actually common, wholesome life-style,” O’Brien notes, together with staying hydrated, consuming common meals, sleeping nicely, and exercising recurrently. Chenoweth additionally practices yoga, which O’Brien notes has “been confirmed to assist enhance migraine.”

For Chenoweth, it’s about staying constant. “After I do all of the issues that I ought to do — drink my water, keep hydrated, eat correctly, and have considerably of a construction like we’re speculated to — It does assist,” she says. “It’s the essential stuff that we neglect about.”

Earlier than you go, examine these stars who’ve opened up about their autoimmune circumstances: