Occipital Nerve Block for Headaches

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The American Academy of Neurology has reported that treating migraine headaches with occipital nerve block is effective. Occipital nerve block is a procedure where anesthetic agents are injected near the occipital nerve on the back of the head near the base of the skull on the side of the migraine headache. Within five minutes after the nerve block, 60% of patients had mild or no headache and 75% of patients had mild or no light sensitivity. Over half of the patients had no side effects. About 20% had pain at the injection site and about 20% experienced dizziness. The investigators of the study concluded that greater occipital nerve blocks are safe and easy procedures that can be performed in the office. The average duration of benefit in these trials was about four days. About 20% of responders still had total … Read more

MDJunction.com

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If you are suffering from any health challenges, I strongly recommend you check out MDJunction.com. The site consists of many online support groups where people share their experiences, feelings, and wisdom. The site also has many articles on health topics as well as finding a doctor services. I feel I have really benefited from the NDPH support forums on the site. Just reading about what other people are experiencing and how they came about to be suffering is very useful information for me personally. It also helps to see what medications others have been successful and not successful with. So I again I recommend you take a look at the site and if you know of anyone suffering recommend it to them as well.

Fishing Trip

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Well the past few days I have been away in the backcountry of the Midwest. There are lots of many interesting wildlife in the area, such as mountain lions, wolves, coyotes, bobcats, and wild turkey. I only saw wild turkey, but I did hear coyotes at night. I ended up going fishing a lot. My friend is really into fishing and it was his place that I was staying at. I ended up catching a lot of bluegill and carpi. My friend got a lot of bass. We were trying to catch a giant catfish, but it never happened. We were also planning on going four wheeling; however, we could not get the ATV to start up for some reason. All in all it was a good trip, pretty relaxing, I just wish I didn’t have a headache throughout it … Read more

Why do we have wisdom teeth?

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While there is no way to verify this, some dentists speculate that wisdom teeth are a vestige from the days when our ancestors literally bit off more than they could chew on a daily basis. It’s thought that the Stone age diet often consisted of coarse, rough foods that required more chewing power. As a result, the jawbones of our ancestors were larger and accommodated 32 teeth with ease. In addition, in the wild, teeth had a tendency to fall prey to decay or get knocked out. If someone lost a tooth, the wisdom teeth would usually push the rest forward to fill in the gap. However, evolution continued and the human diet changed to include softer, more processed foods that were less challenging to our pearly whites and jaws. Losing teeth became less of an issue, and wisdom teeth … Read more

Occipital Neuralgia

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What is Occipital Neuralgia? Occipital neuralgia is a very specific type of headache, where the pain is in the back of the head, at the very top of the neck and behind the ears. This location relates to an area supplied by a nerve, called the occipital nerve, which usually gathers information about pain and touch from this exact area. In occipital neuralgia this area can also sometimes not feel normal sensations as well as usual. While it is usually only on one side of the head, it can sometimes be on both. Predisposing Factors Often the exact cause of occipital neuralgia is not found, but some of the more common causes are: Trauma (damage) to the back of the head ‘Pinching’ (entrapment) of the nerve by overly tight neck muscles Osteoarthritis of the bones in the neck, compressing the … Read more