When you get a severe MAV attack (migraine with vertigo) it means that your brain is in an excitatory neurotoxic state. Some would use the term: neuroinflammatory state.
The neurons will fire at little stimuli, meaning it gets sensitive/hypersensitive (excitotoxic state) to stimuli as light (photophobia), sensitive to sounds and movements (particularly fast and unpredictable movements) such a blinking, scrolling on the computer. The worse this state, the worse the sensitivity is. So when the brain is in this state, the threshold potential is very low and the neurons will fire if exposed to too much (how sensitive your brain is will vary from hour to hour or day to day, week to week).
This means that the higher the neurotoxic/excitotoxic state, the lower the threshold potential. When the neurotoxic state is high it means that your brain/body will try to protect you from basically ruining your brain or cause an even worse brain condition like a more serious seizure. This is why you will have photophobia, phonophobia and aversions for scrolling the screen, aversion for blinking lights, aversion for anything that can worsen the state your brain is currently in. This is just the brain trying to protect you. And what is very wrongly labeled getting “stressed” over it, and that somehow the solution would be to “calm down” in such a situation is not only dangerous, but sheer insanity. The patient NEED to protect himself from the ongoing factor rapidly worsening the migraine/vertigo attack, and need to be/sound alarmed many times in order for the factors triggering and worsening the migraine (say flashing white or blue light repeatedly in a dark room). If you do not get or sound alarmed in such a critical situation, the likelihood of getting a very severe attack (seixure) is profound. So it is by all means counter-productive and dangerous to not be alarmed and make every effort as quickly as possible to stop the factor increasing the current attack and potentially and likely will cause a type of seizure if not immediately addressed.
Same is true for other serious conditions that require immediate actions. The person can not in this situation, say a vestibular severe migraine attack, relax in such a situation,, as the threshold potential in their brain is critically low in such a condition (I speak of a more severe attack, where the threshold potential gets very low). This is the reason why one needs to protect the brain and raise the threshold potential of the brain when critically low, as it is impossible to relax, since it is neurological and when energy dysfunction is the cause as well, energy will drop more and more after every activity, and stimulating/exciting activity will make the situation worse, as the brain is already in an excitatory neurotoxic state, albeit a negative one. But even a positive exciting state, like laughter, will be a stimuli and too excitable, when the state is severe and increase the excitatory neurotoxic state of the brain/neuroinflammatory condition (proven in ME patients).
It is not until the condition improves that you can again go back to handling more normal activity, like handling sunlight, pc screen light, sound and noise and handling blinking, scrolling and other types of activity that is hard to impossible when you have a severe MAV attack or similar brain illness that will cause the neurons to fire at very little stimuli. It can last for hours, days, weeks and months at a mild, moderate to severe level of dysfunction. If milder migraine attacks occur, you can still perform some activity.
I have found that GABA medications helps more than most medications. Even though I have cut these out since June 2020. Other times a mix of paracetamol and naproxen helps and sometimes migraine meds (triptans). Vestibular migraines from mild to severe and Migralepsy seems to fit best with my primary symptoms. There is no doubt for me that there is a clear correlation between the two where a *severe* migraine with vertigo attack is like a slow or mild convulsion. I can feel the brain move back and forth and the nystagmus/shaking of the eyes seems to be an outward sign of what is happening in the brain. When the brain moves back and forth, the eyes will too. Gaba medication will help to increase the threshold potential (reduce the hyperexcitable state your brain is in) so it will go back to a more normal function whenever this attack/state occurs. Gaba will reduce brain inflammation, whereas alcohol and tobacco will induce and increase brain inflammation. This is also how it will help a person who has epilepsy. This is also how gaba medication can help to heal the brain for those who have suffered a stroke.
Remember the describtion of James White's illness, where his brain was in a severely neurotoxic/excitotoxic state due to a recent stroke and he could not handle any sewing or knitting or conversations in the room? This was a perfect example of the phonophobia that occurs when the brain is in this severe neurotoxic state. The neurons would fire at the slightest stimuli (in this case normal or even weak sound) that most would consider almost unnoticable when the brain is not suffering like this. His phonophobia (reaction and aversion to normal sound) was his brain trying to alarm him so that his state was not further aggravated and stopped or regressed the healing process he was in by resting (at the timebeing). If someone who did not understand his situation and condition would come into his room at this time and force him to endure not only conversations in the room, but also sewing and knitting and worse, because they thought that his phonophobia was irrational (yes, to them it would of course be), but to him it was his brain and body trying to protect him at the present from aggravating his medical condition. When his brain healed over time, his neurotoxic state was reduced gradually and could later resume more normal activity and expose himself to the sound of conversations, knitting, sewing and other stimuli he could not at the time handle. Same with myself, and this has been ongoing in periods or days when I have a relapse due to usually a physical type of stressor, in most cases overexertion, my monthly period that increases toxicity and increased anemia, lack of sleep, cold exposure, infections (the flu or cold etc).
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