TeethRemoval.com » Headaches

Headache and Pain Infographic: All About Headaches

wisdom — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:53:13 +0000

Here is an interesting infographic on headaches from the Mount Sinai Medical Center.

The infographic offers statistics on those who suffer from headaches and also offers some remedies to help cure your headache and ease the pain.

Surgical Treatment of Migraine Headaches A study published in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery...
Headaches in Teens Tied to Obesity, Smoking, and Lack of Exercise These findings certainly come as no surprise. Teenagers...
Behavioral Treatment for Migraine Headaches A recently study titled Direct Costs of Preventive...

Behavioral Treatment for Migraine Headaches

wisdom — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 20:05:19 +0000

A recently study titled Direct Costs of Preventive Headache Treatments: Comparison of Behavioral and Pharmacologic Approaches appearing in Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain, 51 (6): 985 -991, June 2011, and written by Allison M. Shafer et al., finds that treating chronic migraines using inexpensive prophylactic medicines such as beta-blockers or tricyclic antidepressants and behavioral approaches such as relaxation training, biofeedback, cognitive behavioral therapy, and stress management are a low cost and effective treatment option particularly after 1 year of treatment.

The authors used a cost minimization analysis and found that after 1 year, the cost of minimal-contact behavioral treatment was cheaper than the least expensive headache treatment medications. Minimal-contact or home based intervention is when a patient sees a therapist for around 3 or 4 visits and largely practices the behavioral techniques at home through the use of printed materials and audio recordings.

For those who would prefer more visits with a therapist the researchers also found that clinic-based behavioral treatment where a therapist is seen in 8 to 12 weekly sessions becomes cost competitive with medications within 6 months and cheaper than most of the medications available for headache prevention within 1 year.

The study concludes

“While behavioral interventions for headache have been well validated empirically and have garnered increasing acceptance in recent years, these therapeutic modalities are not widely integrated into the clinical management of headache patients. Broadscale integration into mainstream healthcare practice depends greatly upon more systematically addressing access as well as financial and reimbursement barriers associated with this valuable approach to care.”

Of course if money is not much of an issue it may be best to pursue all available options. However, this study is important to help save costs for those in need (and also the entire health system). I personally have experience with behavioral approaches for the treatment of my chronic headache brought on by having my 4 healthy wisdom teeth extracted as discussed on teethremoval.com. I also have discussed medications I have tried as well. I hope that behavioral approaches for the management of headaches becomes more widely used and may be very useful and cheaper for some.

Surgical Treatment of Migraine Headaches A study published in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery...
Headaches in Teens Tied to Obesity, Smoking, and Lack of Exercise These findings certainly come as no surprise. Teenagers...

Surgical Treatment of Migraine Headaches

wisdom — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 05:51:54 +0000

A study published in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery shows that trigger site surgery may aid in reducing or even eliminating migraine headaches.

100 patients in a study underwent injection of botulinum toxin A (Botox) into up to 4 potential trigger sites. If a trigger site was identified to be effective than surgery was performed in that trigger area in order to decompress nerves and remove muscles.

71 of 79 patients that were evaluated over a 5 year period were observed to have improvement. This meant they had less mean migraine intensity and or less mean migraine duration.

20 of 69 patients (29.0%) reported elimination of migraines and 41 of 69 patients (59.4%) experience a significant decrease.

Surgery is not without risk and neither is injection of botulinum toxin A. 2 patients had hypersensitivity, 2 patients had hyposensitivity, and 2 patients had numbess at their 5 year follow up. This complications occured in the front region. 1 patient had occasional neck stiffness and 2 patients had occasional neck weakness which occurred in the occipital region.

I know from firsthand experience after having an occipital nerve block in attempt to end my 24/7 headache brought on by removing my wisdom teeth that injections into nerve and muscle areas in an effort to reduce headache can just make things worse as also indicated by this study. ( I discuss this more on http://www.teethremoval.com/occipital_nerve_block.html)

Therefore, anyone suffering from any headache condition should of course proceed with caution before having any injection and/or surgical procedure performed. There are many different types of headache and jumping into any procedure that can just make pain and suffering worse is not well indicated. Even so an injection and/or surgical procedure can aid in helping those who suffer from migraine.

Due to the design protocol of this study there is no way to tell if the botulinum toxin A injection alone would produce similar results to it and the surgery.

Reference: Bahman Guyuron, Jennifer S. Kriegler, Janine Davis, Saeid B. Amini. Five Year Outcome of Surgical Treatment of Migraine Headaches. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. vol. 127. no. 2. 2010.

Headaches in Teens Tied to Obesity, Smoking, and Lack of Exercise These findings certainly come as no surprise. Teenagers...

Headaches in Teens Tied to Obesity, Smoking, and Lack of Exercise

wisdom — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 01:50:04 +0000

These findings certainly come as no surprise. Teenagers who are overweight, get little exercise, or who smoke may be more likely to have frequent headaches and migraines when compared to teens who do not have these characteristics.

Teens with all three of the previously described negative lifestyle factors were 3.4 times more likely to have frequent headaches than those with none of those factors.

Fifty five percent of those teens with all three of these negative lifestyle factors have frequent headaches where as 25% of teens without any of these factors have frequent headaches. Another result of the study was that those with two negative lifestyle factors were 1.8 times more likely to have frequent headaches.

Looking individually at the negative lifestyle factors: smoking teens have headaches 50% more frequently, overweight teens have headaches 40% more frequently and teens who exercise less than twice a week have headaches 20% more frequently.

These results were based on the data provided by the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study where 5,847 students age 13 to 18 in Nord-Trøndelag county in Norway were interviewed by nurses about headaches and their weight and height measurements were taken. They also completed a questionnaire about physical activity and smoking. In addition 36% of girls and 21%o f boys from the study reported having recurrent headaches within the last year.

Source: Andrew D. Hershey, Richard B. Lipton. Lifestyles of the young and migrainous. Neurology, 2010.

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Childhood Experiences Impact Headache Frequency and Cardiovascular Disease

wisdom — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 04:54:51 +0000

Recent research by Gretchen E. Tietjen, MD, of the University of Toledo College Of Medicine, and her colleagues have shown that childhood experiences have an impact on headache frequency and cardiovascular disease experienced once these children reach adulthood.

Specifically Dr Tietjan and her researchers found children who experience maltreatment such as physical abuse, emotional and/or sexual abuse, and/or physical and/or emotional neglect, are more likely to experience frequent headaches as adults. In another study, Dr Tietjan and her researchers found that if migraine suffers’ experienced adverse experiences (as previously mentioned) as children than they were more likely to experience cardiovascular health problems as adults.

“It is clear…that early adverse experiences influence a migraine sufferers’ cardiovascular health in adulthood,” said Dr. Tietjen.

“Earlier studies have linked childhood maltreatment to frequent headaches and migraine,” said David Dodick, M.D., president of the AHS. “The biological underpinnings of this relationship should be a target of future research and clinicians should be aware of and evaluate for this important relationship in order to facilitate appropriate management strategies. Dr. Tietjen and her teams are pioneers in understanding the relationship between negative childhood experiences and migraine. Now we need to drill even deeper to understand the relationship between migraine, aura status, childhood maltreatment and CV disease risk.”

Source: American Headache Society

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