Silence Is Golden, As Are Cat Purrs

In response to Dancing Elephants prompt 1 of 52

Many people feel a need to be constantly surrounded by sound. They have the television playing in the background, while their phone or computer streams music. My brother is one of these people, who had to continuously run a box fan from an early age just so he could sleep.

I’m at the other extreme.

I’m prone to migraines. If you’ve been blessed to never experience one, imagine someone placed a knife on the stovetop, and heated it until it glowed. Then, they plunged it diagonally through your head, starting somewhere between your eye and ear, and continuing down until they reached the center of your brain. Sometimes, just because you wouldn’t want things to be too predictable, they use a giant icicle instead.

The pain is excruciating. The slightest movement of my head triggers waves of nausea. But the pain and nausea aren’t even the worst of it. The worst part is that I am effectively blind, because my field of vision is filled with neon green lightning bolts, and I can’t see the real world through the visual noise.

Fortunately, I rarely have a full-on migraine attack, unless I wake up with one. I’ve learned to recognize the symptoms of a pre-migraine, and to take appropriate precautions to prevent them from progressing into a migraine.

Turn the dial to 11

The main symptoms of a pre-migraine, at least for me, is that it feels like someone turned up the dial on all my senses to 11. (If you’re not familiar with the quote from the awesome Mockumentary, “This Is Spinal Tap”, this explains it.)

I have to slit my eyes to allow just the barest sliver of blindingly bright light to reach my corneas. The smells of coffee, or any sort of tobacco or marijuana product (ubiquitous in Colorado), make me struggle not to throw up. And I don’t mean getting a whiff of a freshly brewed cup. No, the lingering scent on someone’s jacket is enough to make me want to hurl.

By far the worst, however, is sound. Any sort of alarm slices through my skull, as if it wants to finish the job done by the migraine’s knife. I have to put a pillow over my head to muffle the sounds of people in the park…a block and a half away. If I’m upstairs, in the bedroom with the door closed, my husband can’t turn the volume on the downstairs television higher than 8 (out of 100) or it will be too painful for me to stand.

As a result, I prefer the peace and painlessness of quiet. Even the clank of dishes being put away on the far side of the house, or cupboards being allowed to slam shut instead of softly closing them, will aggravate my symptoms. Yet I know my husband is considerately emptying the dishwasher because I’m incapable of it at the moment. His movements don’t sound at all loud to him.

The Healing Power of Purrs

There is only one sound I can stand when I’m in the thrall of a migraine. That’s the sound of a purring cat.

I developed the habit, when I suffered from sinus headaches, of “putting a cat on it”. I’d lay down on the chaise lounge, close my eyes, and rest my cat on top of my forehead. (She normally slept on my pillow, so this was perfectly fine with her.)

The warmth and vibration together soothed the ache far better than Tylenol Sinus. Plus, there were no liver damaging side effects.

A migraine is far more intense than a sinus headache, and I wouldn’t dare try to balance either of our 12-pound Siberians on my head. But our elder cat would curl up next to me on the bed and purr. I’d rest my hand on her side and feel the vibrations.

It helped.

The Science of Healing Purrs

Studies have shown that cats purr in the range of 25 to 140 Hertz, the same frequencies used in frequency healing. These frequencies have been demonstrated to speed the healing of broken bones and torn muscles. They also reduce swelling and inflammation, lessen pain, and improve joint mobility.

There has been some indication that migraines occur when the ingoing and outgoing blood vessels of the brain have different dilations. So, anything that stops constriction of the blood vessels is a good thing. (Doctors emphasize that the mismatch does not cause the migraine, but it increases the pain associated with the migraine.) Because the purr reduces swelling and inflammation, it can help the blood vessels to fully open, and reduce the pain of a migraine.

When silence is not enough

If you also suffer from migraines, tension headaches, or sinus headaches, consider the cat cure. If you’re not lucky enough to have an in-house source of purring, you can find plenty of recorded purring cat videos (with and without background music) on YouTube.

There are even stuffed animals with a vibrational mechanism inside them that “purr” at the same frequency as a cat. While some are inexpensive kids’ toys, the high-end variety are marketed to senior citizens who want realistic companionship, without the mobility challenges and tripping hazard of live animals.

References

The following hyperlink references are given in the order in which they appear in the article.

Wikipedia “Up to eleven” entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_to_eleven

“The Cat’s Purr”, from The Conscious Cat: https://consciouscat.net/the-cats-purr-a-biomechanical-healing-mechanism/

“How Blood Flow Affects Migraines”, from The Apple Valley Clinic of Chiropractic: https://www.theapplevalleyclinic.com/how-blood-flow-affects-migraines/

“How a Migraine Happens”, from Johns Hopkins Medicine: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/headache/how-a-migraine-happens

“Stuffed Animal Cats That Purr”, from Love to Know: https://cats.lovetoknow.com/Stuffed_Animal_Cats_That_Purr