Garys_Girl wrote on Aug 16th, 2008 at 6:46pm:While stress may cause attacks some times and for some people, if stress caused clusters, everyone here would be taking valium and/or practicing yoga.
Laurie
Well, I think what we all can agree on - at least from what I've read here on the message board - is that each of us has different triggers, cycles, levels of intensity, treatments and so forth. I also live in LA and visit a local neurologist knowledgeable about our condition. He's said nothing to me about clusters of clusters, whether strike-induced or not. He did indicate that he felt that stress was definitely a factor.
Again, I can only speak personally. But after 4 cycle-free years I had my first one again this past spring. It coincided, as I've mentioned in earlier posts, with a major event in my life - my brother telling me he needed heart surgery. Certainly this may not have had anything to do with my cycle and there will never be a way to determine it unequivocally. But I'm the worrying type, he's my last immediate family member, and... well, you fill in the rest.
Now, to the strike-induced cl. of cl. issue. I agree, it sounds preposterous and perhaps - given everything else people around the world are going through and the generally coddled nature of the film industry (at least at the upper echelons) - even insulting.
But I note that the poster lives in Santa Monica, which does indeed have a sizable population of movie and TV industry types. I also note that, living here and being a writer, and therefore having kept perhaps a bit more abreast of the strike than the casual reader of these posts, it did indeed cause great financial hardship for a lot of people. Understand, I'm making no value judgment about the causes of the strike or its resolution, nor its importance or lack thereof to world events. But people lost their homes, their health insurance and so forth, certainly stressful events. Coupled with the greater knowledge (I hope!) about our condition out there in General Doctorland, and maybe even teased a bit by people trying to get in the last hurrah examinations (and having time to do so, moreover) by their GPs and so forth before their insurance flew south for the winter...
Anyway one Santa Monica neurologist might well have seen an extra CH patient or two as a result and, voila!, a theory is born.
Of course I could be full of shit about all of this.
David