Headaches

If you are looking for an interesting discussion on headaches and want to see some other people who have been suffering for many many years thoughts and feelings on the subject you can visit the link at the bottom of this post. The link is to a article written by Paula Kamen on Migraines and her prespective and an interview with a headache specialist. I personally strongly dislike the article due to leaving not much hope to patients suffering with headaches and the problem with doctors who are trying to treat them. http://migraine.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/leaving-the-rabbit-hole/#comments 

Earlier studies have indicated that there may be a link between a particular congenital heart anomaly, a patent foramen ovale (PFO), and migraine. Some patients – particularly those suffering from migraine with aura- have had reductions in the frequency and severity of migraines following closure of their PFO. In the Rush study, interventional cardiologists will close the PFO in the catheterization lab using an implant that acts like an umbrella, crossing over the chambers in attempt to occlude or close the flaps together.Principal investigator Dr. Clifford Kavinsky and his team have started enrolling patients for the clinical trial, called MIST II (Migraine Intervention with BioSTAR). The team is looking for individuals with severe migraines to see if they may have a patent foramen ovale. A PFO is a small opening between two overlapping sections of tissue which form a division … Read more

A new study found that people with migraines have differences in an area of the brain that helps process sensory information, including pain.  The cortex area of the brain is thicker in people with migraine than in people who do not have the neurological disorder. Comparing 24 people with migraine to 12 people without migraine, the study found that the somatosensory cortex area of the brain was an average of 21 percent thicker in those with migraine. “Repeated migraine attacks may lead to, or be the result of, these structural changes in the brain,” said study author Nouchine Hadjikhani, MD, of The Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “Most of these people had been suffering from migraines since childhood, so the long-term overstimulation of the sensory fields in the cortex could explain these changes. It’s also … Read more

I found some useful information on Costen’s Syndrome. Manifests with several symptoms that can be divided into auricular, articular and cranial. The joint is sensitive to palpation, with pain and crepitation. Hearing is poorer with buzzing in the earsdizziness and headache around the eyes, the crown and the back of the head. Today it is considered that only arthritic changes and neuralgia are realistic, and possibly certain auricular symptoms. One explanation for this condition is that these changes are preceded by loss of posterior or all teeth, during which the bite drops and the mandibula moves distally, pressing the joint (glavicom) discus articularis and posterior part of the joint chamber. The pressure causes the disk to deform and shift, so that it no longer protects the arch and posterior part of the joint chamber from nerve pressure. This causes irritation … Read more

I found an interesting read yesterday on some sources of headaches written Andrea Trescott, M.D. More than 20 million people in the US suffer from severe headaches, and the annual prevalence has increased nearly 60% since 1980. Nearly 80 percent of these patients report headache-related disability that may result in missed work. In fact, nearly 50 percent of headache sufferers are moderately or severely disabled by a headache attack or “migraine” and lose an estimated 13 workdays and 8 leisure days each year.1 “Migraine” is a term of much confusion in the lay public’s mind. Physicians use the term migraine to mean a specific intracranial vascular headache. Patients usually use the term to mean a “sick headache” or a throbbing headache. Pain management doctors treating headache patients are beginning to realize that the symptomatic diagnosis of migraines (unilateral throbbing headache … Read more