I'm not a doctor and I don't even play one on TV, but I have had migraine headaches all my life. I have been the only male in all the migraine support groups I've been in. Women have this condition much more than men and my heart goes out to every single one of them.

In my case, migraine has been a result of stress, both positive and negative. I have lived an exciting life. My childhood was a wonderful time growing up on a farm with plenty of work to do. I was a wrestler in High School and I loved the excitement. As a family business we took tourists on pack trips into Yellowstone Park.

At the age of nineteen I served a Mormon mission in Panama and Costa Rica. We had to use boats in San Blas, Panama because it was made up of hundreds of small islands. In addition to learning Spanish, I also learned a native dialect of the Kuna Indians that live in the Panamanian jungle and islands on the coast of the Caribbean.

Once I returned home, I got a job working in a sawmill for Louisiana Pacific. The work was very fast-paced and dangerous, but I loved every bit of it. I built my own home all by myself. I was busy all the time, but I always made time for family.

Louisiana Pacific had a similar accounting scandal to that of Enron. The sawmill was shut down and my company stocks that I had been buying over the years were almost worthless. My life always seemed to have a lot of stress, but that’s just life.

Migraine headaches have been a part of my life that I've had to deal with. I've learned that male migraine is a condition brought on as a result of stress. Stress can come from negative events in your life. Stress can also come from exciting, positive events in your life. When our bodies are under constant stress, the brain chemical known as Serotonin can sometimes decrease production.

We first notice the problem when headaches start to happen. We have blood vessels in and around our brain. An imbalance of Serotonin levels can cause the blood vessel walls to relax and dilate. The dilation of blood vessels can cause migraine pain along with disorientation, light and sound sensitivity, nausea, and neck pain.

While this is happening the low levels of Serotonin in the brain may also cause severe depression along with a feeling of hopelessness and despair. Over time, male migraine can cause a condition of depression because of the constant varying levels of Serotonin.

Males are more reluctant to get help with depression than women. Depression is very misunderstood and is still considered a condition of weakness among some men.

When I describe depression to people, I use the phrase, "We believe what we feel, not what we know." That's why you hear some people say, "I know I have no reason to feel sad, but somehow I still do."

We're creatures of emotion not logic. Feeling is more important in our judgment process than knowing.

Migraine and depression are often treated with the same medication because they are both a result of a brain chemical imbalance. Many migraine sufferers can get quick relief from migraine abortive drugs like Triptans. These are vasoconstrictors that shrink blood vessels and bring migraine relief. The day I was introduced to Imitrex was a great day.

Over the last seventeen years, I have used many kinds of triptans and they all work reasonably well for me. My doctor warned me that if I over-used triptans, it could be bad for my heart. I really had no choice, the migraine headaches were happening every day and I always vowed that the quality of life was more important than the quantity of years lived, so I took the triptans daily.

My life was very busy and full of both good and bad stress. Eventually my body reached its threshold of tolerance and I had a heart attack. It was then that I had to re-evaluate my life and prioritize which stressful events I would tolerate and which ones I could let go.

It was only after I de-stressed my life that my headaches stopped. I believe the most important lesson I learned about male migraine and depression is that it is usually self-inflicted.

Sometimes we think everything is going good and we enjoy stress because it's challenging, but it is causing us a lot more damage than we know. If you're having migraine headaches, there might be something in your life that you need to change.

Larry Angell