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New Blood Pressure Medication for Migraines

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A new study by the Norway and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology shows that a blood pressure medication, candesartan, is as effective as propranolol which is prescribed to prevent migraine. Further, candesartan may work better for those migraine suffers who don’t find propranolol to be useful. The study by the norwegian researchers was a triple blind test which means that neither patients nor doctors nor those who analyzed the results knew whether the patients had been given the drug or a placebo. Seventy two patients took part in the study and all patients were affected by migraine attacks at least twice a month. The patients used each treatment candesartan, propranolol, or placebo for 12 weeks and also underwent four weeks before start and finish between each treatment without anything. As such each patient was tested for nearly a … Read more

Blood Levels in Fat Cells May Help Predict Migraine

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A new study appearing in the journal Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain, looks at people experiencing two to twelve migraine headaches a month. In this study researchers found that measuring a fat-derived protein called adiponectin before and after migraine treatment is useful in revealing if headache patients felt pain relief or not. The researchers of the study are hopeful that finding this potential biomarker for migraine of adiponectin may be used for developing new and better migraine treatment options. Finding better treatment options for migraine sufferers is lucrative because roughly 36 million Americans suffer from migraine headaches which can last longer than 4 hours at a time. Women are three times to get migraines when compared to men. In the study the researchers collected blood from 20 women who visited 3 different headache clinics for an acute … Read more

Do Oral Surgeons Prescribe Too Many Narcotics for use after Wisdom Teeth Removal?

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A new article published in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery is titled ” Narcotic Prescribing Habits and Other Methods of Pain Control by Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons After Impacted Third Molar Removal,” by Ibrahim Mutlu, A. Omar Abubaker, and Daniel M. Laskin (vol. 71, pp. 1500-1503, 2013). The article explores the issue of whether or not oral surgeons regularly prescribe more than an adequate amount of narcotic pain killers to young adults after their wisdom teeth extraction. It has been believed by some that the narcotics given by oral surgeons for wisdom teeth removal can be a source of using narcotics for non-medical uses. In this article a 8 question survey was sent to 100 randomly selected oral and maxillofacial surgeon members of the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon (AAOMS). The questions were related to whether … Read more

Controversy Surrounding Marijuana

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I recently watched a very controversial documentary shown on Wealth TV (re-run had previously aired) titled Marijuana Miracle Cure 2 Wired for Weed. This came out a few months ago in 2013, and seems to be a follow up to their Marijuana Miracle Cure program from 2012. If you have not seen it, you may be able to catch another re-run on Wealth TV or you may be able to find the entire 1 hour program (including commercials) on YouTube. The documentary raises some interesting points about marijuana (aka cannabis) and it’s potentially medical properties. Now the first question, I have, is why does Wealth TV have a documentary on marijuana? It seems from the documentary that they are genuinely interested in the potential medical issues of marijuana. This is because of the focus and nature of the documentary, but there … Read more

Exercise Effective for Preventing Migraines

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An interesting study was recently published in Cephalalgia and looked at 91 migraine patients. A third of these patients were asked to exercise for 40 minutes for 3 times a week with the supervision of a physiotherapist, another third were doing relaxation exercises, and the final third of the patients was given topiramate. The study lasted for a total of 3 months, in which the migraine status, aerobic capacity, level of physical activity, and quality of life was evaluated.  Follow ups of the study were carried out after 3 and 6 months. The randomized controlled study was performed by researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. The results showed that the number of migraines fell in all three groups that were examined and described above. There was no difference in the preventative effect between the … Read more