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Link Between Antiepileptic Drugs and Suicidal Thoughts or Behaviors Distilled

FDA’s warning about suicidal thoughts and behaviors in people taking anti-seizure meds distilled: “For every 1,000 patients, about two more drug-treated patients experienced suicidal thoughts than placebo-takers, FDA concluded,” according to New York Times article FDA Warns of Risks From Epilepsy Drugs. Other article highlights include:
Very rarely were suicidal thoughts or behavior reported. Still, the [...]

Doctors Paid to Prescribe Generic Drugs

Health insurers have provided doctors with financial incentives to prescribe generic medications, according to an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:
Health plans are drawing scrutiny for offering financial incentives to entice doctors to prescribe cheaper generic medicines, including paying doctors $100 each time they switch a patient from a brand-name drug.
Pharmaceutical companies have long gone [...]

Migraine: A Surprisingly Visible Invisible Illness

Writer Anne Lamott describes someone with a migraine as having “a sort of death about the eyes.” As with pretty much everything she writes, her words draw a perfect picture.
I noticed long ago that I get dark circles under my eyes during a migraine. After reading Lamott’s line, I realized my eyes also appear to [...]

Alternative and Complementary Medicine: Evaluating Success Rates

Evaluating any medical claim carefully is crucial, no matter the source. With so many false or overblown claims about alternative and complementary treatments, I’m pretty skeptical. Alternative Medicine: Evaluate Claims of Treatment Success from the Mayo Clinic can help sort fact from fiction.
The section on avoiding internet misinformation is a must-read. Other topics in the [...]

Tai Chi and Yoga for Pain Management in Neurology Now

Tai chi is one of the therapies that I’m definitely going to try. Neurology Now’s article describing how tai chi and yoga invokes the mind-body connection to relieve pain cemented my decision. Physical benefits aside, releasing tension and teaching mindfulness are the most powerful effects of tai chi and yoga, according to the article.
Mindfulness is [...]

Why “Heal Your Headache” by David Buchholz Infuriates Me

I remember just how angry Heal Your Headache: The 1-2-3 Approach for Taking Charge of Your Pain makes me by the impassioned responses I get whenever I mention the book. I know David Buchholz’s treatment approach is effective for a lot of people. I am
truly happy for them. Buchholz’s snarky attitude and shaky underlying
evidence is [...]

Long- and Short-Term Caregiving With Migraine and Chronic Daily Headache

My friend and I managed to reciprocate caring for each other all weekend. I made dinner Friday; Saturday she made me a pie. I held babies (like that was a sacrifice!); she taught me to make crepes. Since we’re both caregivers by nature, we were both happy.
It was a bad weekend pain and nausea-wise. I [...]

Extreme Makeover Home Edition Builds New Home for Chiari Advocate

Julie Carter and her three daughters all have Chiari malformation, a rare abnormality at the base of the brain that results in brain tissue extending into the spinal canal, which causes severe headaches. Nearly a half a million dollars in debt from brain surgeries, they lived in a refurbished chicken coop. An advocate for Chiarians [...]

Is Your Doctor in Touch With Current Research?

Being an informed patient sometimes means feeling like you know more than your doctor does. Sometimes this isn’t just a feeling, but a fact.
In Why Doesn’t My Doctor Know This?, Dr. Kent Holtorf explains that “. . . [T]he overwhelming majority (all but a few percent) of physicians (endocrinologists, internists, family practitioners, rheumatologists, etc.) do [...]

Guilt Comorbid With Headaches

“Comorbidity refers to the greater than coincidental association of separate conditions in the same individuals. Historically, a number of conditions have been noted to be comorbid with migraine, notably psychiatric disorders (anxiety, depression, panic disorder), epilepsy, asthma, and some congenital heart defects.”
This quote is from an abstract of an article from the June 2005 issue [...]