Patients educate patients to control migraine

When migraine patients trained other migraine patients how to prevent migraine headaches, attacks declined and both trainers and trainees gained a greater sense of control over their attacks, researchers report.

Patient-trainers provide credible and recognizable disease-specific knowledge, Dr. Jan Passchier told Reuters Health. "Trainees appreciated the trainers' emotional and motivational assistance."

Moreover, trainers themselves benefited "in terms of large headache improvements and improved quality of life," noted Passchier, of Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Passchier and colleagues evaluated the effects of migraine sufferers providing other migraine sufferers with home-based behavior training. Both trainers and trainees were under medical care for relatively frequent migraine (1 to 6 times per month), with or without aura, but had no underlying associated disease, the investigators explain in the journal Cephalalgia.

For more information, visit mymigraineconnection.com

Tame Tension Headaches

Tension headaches are often triggered by stress or anxiety, causing pain and muscle tension in the head and neck.

Here are suggestions to help keep tension headaches at bay, courtesy of the U.S. National
Library of Medicine:

Help control stress and anxiety with exercise, meditation, yoga or other stress-relieving methods.

Get plenty of sleep each night.

If you have muscle soreness in the upper back, neck or head, gently massage the muscles in these areas.

Know what causes headaches for you, and try to prevent the condition. For example, if cold temperatures tend to cause your headaches, try to keep warm.

Try sleeping with a different pillow, or sleeping in a different position.

Maintain good posture. Exercise the neck and shoulders often, especially when typing, reading or working at a computer.

For more information, visit Mymigraineconnection.com

Headache common in people with GI trouble

The prevalence of headache is higher in people with gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms such as nausea, acid reflux, diarrhea, and constipation, than in people who don't have these bothersome symptoms, new research indicates.

Both headaches and GI symptoms are common in the general population and eat up substantial healthcare dollars, note the researchers.

To investigate, Dr. Anne Hege Aamodt and associates from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, reviewed questionnaires completed by 43,732 participants in the Nord-Trondelag Health Study, including information on GI symptoms as well as headache.

After adjusting for gender, age, depression, anxiety and other factors that might influence the results, the research team noted a significantly higher prevalence of headache among participants with reflux, diarrhea, constipation, and nausea, compared to those without such complaints.

These results have implications for the treatment of headache patients.

For more information, visit Mymigraineconnection.com

Educating patients to control migraine

When migraine patients trained other migraine patients how to prevent migraine headaches, attacks declined and both trainers and trainees gained a greater sense of control over their attacks, researchers report.

Patient-trainers provide credible and recognizable disease-specific knowledge, Dr. Jan Passchier told Reuters Health. "Trainees appreciated the trainers' emotional and motivational assistance."

Moreover, trainers themselves benefited "in terms of large headache improvements and improved quality of life," noted Passchier, of Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Passchier and colleagues evaluated the effects of migraine sufferers providing other migraine sufferers with home-based behavior training. Both trainers and trainees were under medical care for relatively frequent migraine (1 to 6 times per month), with or without aura, but had no underlying associated disease, the investigators explain in the journal Cephalalgia.

Passchier's team recruited trainers from a pool of patients who took behavioral training classes themselves. The 14 trainers were educated in how to train others to detect and modify their individual migraine triggers and use relaxation and breathing exercises, as well as other behavioral techniques to prevent attacks.

Patients reporting greater numbers of migraines appeared to benefit more from training than did those with less frequent attacks, the researchers report.

Moreover, patients receiving behavioral training reported significantly increased self-confidence in their own ability to prevent migraine attacks, and a greater ability to manage and control attacks.

For more information, visit mymigraineconnection.com

Headache common in people with GI trouble

The prevalence of headache is higher in people with gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms such as nausea, acid reflux, diarrhea, and constipation, than in people who don't have these bothersome symptoms, new research indicates.

Both headaches and GI symptoms are common in the general population and eat up substantial healthcare dollars, note the researchers.

To investigate, Dr. Anne Hege Aamodt and associates from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, reviewed questionnaires completed by 43,732 participants in the Nord-Trondelag Health Study, including information on GI symptoms as well as headache.

After adjusting for gender, age, depression, anxiety and other factors that might influence the results, the research team noted a significantly higher prevalence of headache among participants with reflux, diarrhea, constipation, and nausea, compared to those without such complaints.

"The association between headache and gastrointestinal complaints increased markedly with increasing headache frequency," Aamodt told Reuters Health.

These results have implications for the treatment of headache patients. "It is important to consider the total burden of discomfort in these patients and to avoid headache medication with adverse gastrointestinal effects in those with much gastrointestinal discomfort," Aamodt said.

The strong ties between frequent headache and frequent GI complaints raises questions about common mechanisms that make headache sufferers predisposed to GI complaints, Aamodt also noted.

For more information, mymigraineconnection.com

Drug doesn't help prevent migraine after all: study

Contrary to some reports, the anti-epilepsy drug oxcarbazepine does not appear to prevent migraine headaches, new research suggests.

Anti-epilepsy drugs have been used for the prevention of migraine, Dr. Stephen Silberstein of the Jefferson Headache Center in Philadelphia, and associates note in the journal Neurology -- and reports have suggested that oxcarbazepine would be effective as well.

In a study lasting almost five months, the investigators randomly assigned 170 men and women with a history of migraine to a daily dose of oxcarbazepine or inactive placebo. Both groups included people who had three to nine migraine attacks within a month.

Results showed no difference between the oxcarbazepine and placebo groups in the change in the number of migraine attacks from the beginning to the end of the study.

Similarly, the severity of migraine attacks and the amount of acute rescue medication required was not affected by treatment allocation.

For more information, visit Mymigraineconnection.com

Depression Common In Headache Sufferers

I was interested in a recent article that I found on the Web which stated that major depression occurs very frequently among patients with chronic headaches.

A research team from the University of Tsukuba, Japan studied 177 consecutive adult primary-care patients whose main illness was headache, and who were seen over a 1-year period. Forty-five of the patients (25%) were found to have a major depressive episode. And the investigators saw that depression was more likely in patients who had severe headache, longer headache duration, and multiple symptoms.

For more information on this study, visit healthcentral.com

Early abuse may lead to migraine, depression

Stressful early life events such as child abuse may make women more susceptible to migraine and depression as adults, survey findings suggest.

According to a recent study, women with migraine who had depression were twice as likely as those with migraine alone to report being sexually abused as a child. If the abuse continued beyond age 12, the women with migraine were five times more likely to report depression.

The findings are published in the medical journal Neurology.


For more information, visit healthcentral.com

Restless legs may be associated with migraine

An intolerable internal feeling of itching or creeping sensations in the legs that forces the affected person to move his or her legs to get relief, Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) occurs more often in people who suffer migraines than in those free of these debilitating headaches.

According to a recent study at the University of Munster, being older and having migraine headaches for a long time seem to raise the risk of RLS. Future studies may uncover a common genetic background for both RLS and migraine.

For more information, visit healthcentral.com

Injury to the neck vertebrae can cause headaches

In rare cases, injury to the vertebral disc in the lower neck will not only lead to neck pain and pain radiating into the arm, but also to headaches, the results of a new study indicate.

Prolapse of a vertebral disc in the lower part of the neck (cervical spine), a condition sometimes referred to as a "slipped disc," is known to cause a variety of symptoms.

The cervical disc protrudes and compresses a portion of the spinal cord, causing pain that may limit neck movement. The pain radiates through the shoulder into the arm, and numbness or paralysis of the fingers may also occur.

Now, investigators add headache to the list of possible symptoms.

Their report indicates that the headache, along with the other types of pain, "improves or resolves after successful surgery," Dr. Hans C. Diener of University Duisburg-Essen, Germany, told Reuters Health.

Therefore, patients with a headache that coincides with neck pain and pain radiating into one arm should undergo MRI of the cervical spine, Diener said.

In the journal Cephalagia this month, Diener and colleagues report that 12 of 50 (24 percent) patients with disc prolapse in one of the lower cervical discs complained of new-onset neck pain and headache, compared with 2 of 50 (4 percent) another group of patients with a disc injury in the lower back.

Seven of the 12 (58 percent) patients with headache fulfilled 3 out of 4 International Headache Society criteria for cervicogenic headache (or headache emanating from the upper spine). The headaches in the two patients with the lower back injuries did not meet these criteria.

As mentioned, the physicians also found that removal of the prolapsed disc by surgery led to a significant reduction or disappearance of pain and headache in 80 percent of patients. The pain was relieved 1 week after surgery and was still gone after 3 months, they note.

Diener's team points out that cervicogenic headache caused by irritation or pressure to the upper cervical disc has been "well described." The current findings now suggest that pain in the lower cervical roots can converge with other nerves to cause pain extending through the arm and into the head, the researchers conclude.

For more information, visit healthcentral.com

Injury to the neck vertebrae can cause headaches

By Megan Rauscher

In rare cases, injury to the vertebral disc in the lower neck will not only lead to neck pain and pain radiating into the arm, but also to headaches, the results of a new study indicate.

Prolapse of a vertebral disc in the lower part of the neck (cervical spine), a condition sometimes referred to as a "slipped disc," is known to cause a variety of symptoms.

The cervical disc protrudes and compresses a portion of the spinal cord, causing pain that may limit neck movement. The pain radiates through the shoulder into the arm, and numbness or paralysis of the fingers may also occur. Now, investigators add headache to the list of possible symptoms.

Their report indicates that the headache, along with the other types of pain, "improves or resolves after successful surgery," Dr. Hans C. Diener of University Duisburg-Essen, Germany, told Reuters Health.

Therefore, patients with a headache that coincides with neck pain and pain radiating into one arm should undergo MRI of the cervical spine, Diener said.

In the journal Cephalagia this month, Diener and colleagues report that 12 of 50 (24 percent) patients with disc prolapse in one of the lower cervical discs complained of new-onset neck pain and headache, compared with 2 of 50 (4 percent) another group of patients with a disc injury in the lower back.S

Seven of the 12 (58 percent) patients with headache fulfilled 3 out of 4 International Headache Society criteria for cervicogenic headache (or headache emanating from the upper spine). The headaches in the two patients with the lower back injuries did not meet these criteria.

As mentioned, the physicians also found that removal of the prolapsed disc by surgery led to a significant reduction or disappearance of pain and headache in 80 percent of patients. The pain was relieved 1 week after surgery and was still gone after 3 months, they note.

Diener's team points out that cervicogenic headache caused by irritation or pressure to the upper cervical disc has been "well described." The current findings now suggest that pain in the lower cervical roots can converge with other nerves to cause pain extending through the arm and into the head, the researchers conclude.

For more information, visit healthcentral.com

Book links Fibromyalgia to Migraines

J. Wes Tanner, MD announces his new eBook, “Doctor, Why Do I Feel This Way?”

J. Wes Tanner, MD is a family practice and headache specialist who has been treating people for over thirty years. He has extensive experience in treating migraines and fibromyalgia with excellent success. He has had many patients cured of their fibromyalgia.

Dr. Tanner is publishing his book, “Doctor, Why Do I Feel This Way?”, which exposes the secrets and myths of fibromyalgia. He has coined the name migraine syndrome to explain many different symptoms the migraine patient experiences. These patients are sensitive to light, sound, smell, food, and/or stress. If migraine patients are over-stimulated long enough they develop fibromyalgia.

“Wow! I think your book is superb and will help many people suffering with this perplexing complex of diseases. Congratulations Wes.”

This endorsing comment was made by Roger Cady, MD who is best known in the medical community for his pivotal contributions in the field of headache and migraine management. He was the co-recipient of the prestigious Wolff Award in 2000 from the American Headache Society for his research entitled “The Spectrum of Headache”. Dr. Cady currently serves on 12 Advisory Boards and is a member of the Board of Directors for the National Headache Foundation.

Fibromyalgia is known as the great impostor. It often masquerades as a single complaint of depression, neck or low back aches, or possibly even chest pain. Headaches, panic attacks, insomnia, memory problems, tennis elbow, ear pain, or other problems may be associated with fibromyalgia. Patients often do not realize that a single complaint may be just the tip of the iceberg. If the doctor listens closely and asks questions about the whole body (not just the main complaint), then the rest of the iceberg may be revealed.

Dr. Tanner is developing unique ways to enable the patient to have more meaningful office visits. Patients will be able to answer questions from Dr. Tanner through the Internet. Then they will be able to download printed sheets which would facilitate their next doctor visit. In general your doctor only has about 7 or 8 minutes of undivided attention for each patient visit. Declining insurance reimbursement will only continue to exacerbate this problem. Therefore you need to be prepared to take maximum advantage of the time available with your doctor.

For more information, visit migrainesyndrome.net