The Truth About Migraine Treatments

Since this blog is for clearing up misconceptions and exposing misinformation, fake claims of cures, and scams, there are times when we need to take a good look at the truth. This is one of those times.

Do you take daily medications to prevent Migraines or headaches? If so, you’re taking medications developed for other conditions. Writer and advocate Teri Robert calls these “hand-me-down” drugs. The truth is that there is not one single solitary drug on the market that was developed for the prevention of Migraines and headaches. The truth is that the NIH doesn’t allocate research funding based on how many people are impacted or the severity of the impact. The truth is that each and every one of us has the opportunity — in fact, the responsibility – to help address this deplorable situation.

The Alliance for Headache Disorders Advocacy sent out this action alert yesterday:

Dear AHDA advocates -

The moment has arrived for you to contact your members of the US House of Representatives to take action for increasing National Institutes of Health (NIH) research on headache disorders.

Please go to the AHDA website as soon as possible to send strong but focused emails to your members of the House with just a few clicks.

Publicly funded research is the key to fundamental discoveries that accelerate drug development and expand the field of headache medicine. However, the NIH has never provided adequate funding for research on headache disorders. Currently, NIH expenditures for headache research are less than $13M annually, comprising less than 0.05% of the NIH budget. Meanwhile, headache disorders cost more than $31B in the US annually, including 9% of lost labor productivity, and result in more lost years of healthy life every year than epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, and ovarian cancer combined. As a consequence of insufficient research, only two innovative drugs have received FDA approval for migraine treatment in the past fifty years.

We are requesting that the US House and the Senate each include language that prioritizes research on headache disorders with the fiscal year 2010 appropriations bills for the NIH. At this particular time, we need our members of the House to sign a “Dear Colleague” letter that they received last week.

The AHDA website simplifies contacting your members of the House with the right message at the right time. You will also be able to add a brief personal statement to your members of the House if you wish.

The more emails that members of the House receive from constituents right now, the more likely they will act upon this issue. You CAN make a difference. Let Congress know you care now.

Also, right now please forward this email to everyone you know that also cares about someone suffering from migraine or other headache disorders.

Through collective advocacy we will improve the care for individuals with headache disorders. Thanks very much for your help.

Best regards to you all,
Robert Shapiro, MD, PhD; Burlington, Vermont
William Young, MD; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Brad Klein, MD, MBA; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Teri Robert, PhD; Washington, West Virginia

Please take a few minutes to go to the AHDA web site and send an email to your representative in the House. The truth is that any U.S. citizen who doesn’t take a few minutes to do this has absolutely no right to complain about the lack of effective treatments.

To send your email, quickly and easily, just CLICK HERE.

Best,
Arabella ♥

Cluster Migraines Again!

This one is a bit tricky, so let’s tackle the “article” first. It’s titled “Vital Cluster Migraine Information,” and it’s brimming with MISinformation…

This kind of migraine is felt in different chambers of your head…

Hearts have chambers, heads do not. Brains do have lobes.

Cluster migraine is more common among the men than women…

This is a clue that he’s probably talking about cluster headaches. Cluster headaches are NOT a form of Migraine. They are two very, very different disorders.

When you are having a Cluster form of migraine attack, go to a quiet and dark room with favorable temperature and lay down.

Again, there’s no such thing as a cluster Migraine. If he is indeed talking about cluster headaches, this isn’t going to work. Most cluster headache sufferers have trouble staying still and feel worse if they lie down.

The treatments usually include anything from avoiding a certain kind of food (aged cheese, wine) to the intake of other drugs.

All in all, it looks as if the author has made up a headache disorder by combining cluster headaches and some form of Migraine. The question is, “Why?”

Ahhhhhhhhhhh. There are a couple of possible answers to the “Why?” question:

1. The page has Google ads above and below the article. The author earns $$ every time anyone clicks on the ads.
2. If you go back to the home page of headache-migraine-release.com, you hit the jackpot — “How To Cure Your Headache.”

It appears that the real purpose of the site is to push a five-day e-course, “How To Cure Your Headache,” by Jan Heering. Out of curiosity, I subscribed to the e-course, and I have to admit to being glad I did. So far, I’ve received two lessons, and they’ve been the funniest things in my email for ages.

Maybe Heering believes what he’s saying. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s just misguided. Just realize that his articles aren’t of any benefit other than possibly entertainment.

Best,
Arabella♥

Let’s Do Something About Needed Migraine Treatments!

It’s about time we had better Migraine treatments. Right? Right!

Most of the time, I post about Migraine sites and blogs that are disappointing, questionable, or wrong.  Today, I want to post about SOMETHING that’s wrong while posting about some sites and people who are great!

One of the reasons we don’t have better treatments is that the burden of research is left on the shoulders of the pharmaceutical companies. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) who should be funding the kind of research that reveals more about the causes of Migraine disease and how Migraines actually work in our brains, funds very, very little research for Migraine diseae or other headache disorders.

According to the Alliance for Headache Disorders Advocacy (the AHDA), the NIH expended less than $10 millong in 2006 towards all research on headache disorders, comprising less than one-half of one percent of their budget. The AHDA grew out of a 2007 event called Headache on the Hill. During Headache on the Hill, a group of doctors, researchers, and patient advocates traveled to Washington, DC, to speak to their congress members about NIH funding for Migraine and headache research.

Their work didn’t stop there. The AHDA kept at it, calling on everyone to send emails to their congressmen to get their backing. They also made it really easy! The emails were pre-written, and it only took a few minutes to go to their site and send them.

Later this month, Headache on the Hill will be going on again. As these dedicated people are preparing to brave this cold winter and travel to DC again, they’re also anticipating that they may need to enlist our help soon to send emails to congress again.

Soooooooooo, to get read for that, we all need to be sure we’re signed up to get their email alerts when our help is needed.

Let’s put our fingers where our mouths so often are and register for the AHDA mailing list. To do so, simply CLICK HERE.

Please, register for their mailing list AND ask all of your family and friends to do the same.

To keep up with all the AHDA is doing, as well as other important issues, keep an eye on MyMigraineConnection.com, where author and patient advocate Teri Robert always keeps us up-to-date.

Best,
Arabella♥

Images courtesy of Teri Robert and the Alliance for Headache Disorders Advocacy

Don’t Write About Migraines If You Don’t Know About Them

What’s with people anyway? Why don’t they write about what they know about or at least do some recent research?

My gripe today is with a blog called “Skin Care” and today’s blog entry “What Do We Mean When We Talk About A Migraine Headache?” Beyond the fact that “A” in the title shouldn’t be capitalized, the writer hasn’t really done much, if any, research. The material in this blog is old, old, old, much like the one I griped about yesterday.

I’ll keep today’s post shorter. Here are my problems with this blog entry…

Migraines are fairly common and affect about one in ten people in America, or over 28 million Americans.

It’s actualy 12% of Americans, not 10%. AND that 28 million figure is very old. If you use CURRENT statistics from the Census Bureau, the correct number is 36 million American Migraineurs.

There are in fact two types of migraine, the first of which is called ‘classical migraine’, which is characterized by an associated ‘aura’. Here the term ‘aura’ is used to refer to visual light effects which are experienced just before the start of a headache including things like flashing lights and bright light spots. In a few cases a complete loss of vision may be experienced for some minutes before the onset of the headache.

The second type of migraine is a migraine without the prior symptoms of an ‘aura’…

Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay. Classic and common Migraine are old terms. The current terms are Migraine with aura and Migraine without aura. Aura can have symptoms other than the visual symptoms. TWO types of Migraines? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. Methinks this person doesn’t know about Basilar-Type, Hemiplegic, Retinal, and Abdominal Migraine?

I really think this person should stick to the topic of their blog – skin care. Then too, the blog doesn’t look like it’s really being written for information. It looks like it’s being written as a platform for advertising. But then, I could be mistaken.

Anyway, don’t waste your time on this blog.

Best,
Arabella♥

Outdated Migraine Information

From a Google Blog Alert today, I came across a blog I hadn’t seen before, “Health Blog | Mind, Body and Soul.” Their About page states:

This Blog used for sharing knowledge about how to make a better life. Some post are original and some are copied with related information about the author from other resources such as book or article on a website. Enjoy…

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Yes, but…

Today, they posted an article titled “What You Need to Know About The Types of Migraine Headaches.” We DO need to know about the different types of Migraine ATTACKS, but this is NOT the article to learn from. Here are some problematic quotes from their article:

Migraines belong to a group called vascular headaches, probably caused by problems with blood vessels in the brain.

Old, old, old theory. Migraines are not longer considered vascular headaches, and we now know that what happens with the blood vessels in the brain during a Migraine attack is neither the cause of Migraine attacks nor the first thing that happens in the brain during a Migraine attack.

Young women with basilar artery migraines may suffer from a hormonal imbalance associated with their menstrual cycle.

Basilar artery Migraines have been called Basilar-TYPE Migraines for years now. Also, any type of Migraine can be triggered by the hormonal fluctuations that occur during the menstrual cycle. It depends on whether hormonal fluctuations are a trigger for the individual woman, not the type of Migraine they have.

Several types of migraine headaches focus on the eyes, including ophthalmoplegic or ocular migraines… Also referred to as retinal migraines, ocular migraines…

This part, I’m not really sure whether to categorize as old information or flat-out wrong. In either case, it’s incorrect. Sadly, incorrect information about “eye Migraines” isn’t uncommon online, and it’s really confusing. Author and patient advocate Teri Robert has explained this better than I ever could in her article Ocular, Optical, and Opthalmic Migraines.

Outdated information is selom helpful. I wish I could say that even though I just ran across this today, it’s an old article. But, it doesn’t seem to be; the blog entry is dated today.  So, thumbs DOWN from me!

Best,
Arabella♥

Permanent Alternative Treatment for Migraines?

Well, here we go again. An inaccurate article written, I suspect, just to promote “cures” and other nonsense.

The blog is called “Migraine and Headache.” This particular entry is titled “Migraine Headaches – Get Information on a Permanent Alternative Treatment” by Jo Mark. The entry is chock-full of inaccurate and questionable information. Here are some examples:

She says:

Migraines are caused by the enlargement of blood vessels and the release of chemicals from nerve fibers that coil around these blood vessels. As your blood vessels enlarge, the nerves surrounding them stretch. This stretching action causes the nerves to release chemicals. These chemicals cause inflammation, pain, and further enlargement of the artery, which intensifies the pain.

Ah, the old vascular theory. It has now been shown that the enlargement of the blood vessels is NOT the cause of Migraine. It’s part of a chain reaction that occurs during a Migraine attack. Before the blood vessels enlarge, neurons in the brain start firing, and the blood vessels shrink for a very short period before enlarging. The cause is those neurons which, in the brains of Migraineurs, are overly sensitive, AND genes. Migraine is genetic.

She also says:

The first course of treatment for migraines are over-the-counter analgesics and pain relievers (like acetaminophen and ibuprofen among others).

Not many doctors would agree with that these days. Most of them think it’s better to use one of the prescription drugs that actually stop a Migraine instead of just covering the pain for a while.

The last paragraph says:

There is one alternative treatment for the permanent cure that is gaining popularity. For more information, get all the details on this Amazing Migraine Treatment.

Yes! I knew it. The whole, inaccurate article was leading up to a sales pitch. Of course, it’s not a very effective pitch since below the entry it says:

If you suffer from panic attacks, eliminate them with:
Panic Attack Cure.

Oh, and there’s no link to this “Panic Attack Cure,” which is probably good because I can’t imagine it being worth much.

Best,
Arabella♥

Disappointing Migraine Blog Entry: National Headache Foundation

We all love good news, and we’d all love it if it turned out that there were positive aspects to having Migraine disease.

Back in November, the media was buzzing, reporting that having Migraines decreases a woman’s risk of breast cancer by 30%.

Yesterday, the National Headache Foundation blogged “Migraineurs have a lower incidence of breast cancer. Their blog entry began:

A silver lining for women who suffer from migraine has been discovered—researchers have determined that female migraineurs have a significantly lower chance of developing breast cancer than women who do not have migraines.

Overall, women with a history of migraine showed a 30% decrease in the incidence of the most common types of breast cancer.

You may ask what’s wrong with what they wrote. If you’ve been reading my blog very long, you know I’m going to tell you.

What’s wrong is that the study had some serious shortcomings. For one thing, patients in the study weren’t medically screened for Migraines. It all hinged upon the patients telling the researchers that they had Migraines. Many Migraineurs are undiagnosed, and some in that study may not have told the researchers they have Migraines. And, how many of us have had people tell us they have Migraines too just because they have a bad headache? So, some may have said they have Migraines when the indeed do not.

I don’t want to prolong this, so I’m going to give you two quotes from Migraine experts to further demonstrate my point about this study:

From Dr. Stephen Silberstein, director of the Jefferson Headache Center:

This study doesn’t prove anything. It’s not that I don’t believe the results, it’s that the results are not believable.

From Dr. Ellen Drexler of Maimonides Medical center:

Migraine brains are more sensitive to many exogenous and endogenous factors, of which falling estrogen levels are an important one for many female Migraineurs,…. However, female Migraineurs are not known to have consistently lower levels of estrogen than are non-Migraineurs… genetic factors may also be playing a role, as well as exogenous factors such as medication use, smoking and alcohol use, which may vary between Migraineurs and non-Migraineurs…

So why did the NHF’s blog entry state that there’s a silver lining, that women with a history of Migraine showed a 30% decrease in the incidence of Migraine — with no qualifiers on the statements?

I don’t know why, but it’s disappointing. We should be able to expect more from such a large, prominent organization. We should be able to expect them to give us perspective on such studies, not just regurgitate the statistics.

Best,
Arabella♥

sources of information:

• “Migraineurs have a lower incidence of breast cancer.” National Headache Foundation Blog. January 20, 2009.
• “Migraines Decrease Risk of Breast Cancer? Maybe Not.” Teri Robert. November 24, 2–8.

Migraine Can Be Cured by a Disciplined Lifestyle

Yeah, right. Here we go again, ladies and gents!

The blog “Click for How To?” has an entry today titled “How to Control Migraine.” This entry has several statments that injure it:

Make sure that you do not eat anything too spicy. You should also do better by avoiding red meat and pork….

Now, those may be good general lifestyle tips, but Migraine trigger foods vary from person to person, so if the implication is that those foods trigger Migraine, that’s one stike.

There are some herbs that also work wonders. You can try ginger and this will control your nausea and headache. Feverfew is another herb that is known to be helpful in curing migraine.

This statment also injures the believability of the blog entry. Ginger does help many people with the nause of a Migraine, but does nothing for the headache of a Migraine attack. Feverfew is helpful for some people in preventing Migraines, BUT if this blogger wants to recommend it, he or she should be responsible enough to mention that it shouldn’t be taken by pregnant women. It can cause miscarriage.

Now, here’s the fatal flaw in that blog entry:

Migraine can be cured. All you need is a disciplined lifestyle. Good food habit, sleep, meditation, and regular doctor check up can make sure that you live a migraine free life.

Give it a rest, fool! If it were that simple, we’d all know about it and be cured already!! What an ass!

Best,
Arabella ♥

Disappointing: Mark Foley at About.com

On November 11, fellow Migraine blogger Abi Addison wrote New Migraine Guide at About – a Good Thing? At that time, About.com had finally found someone to take Teri Robert’s place as their “guide” to headaches and Migraine. At that point, it didn’t look as if the new guide had much going for him, but most everyone I saw say anything about it, was taking Abi’s attitude of “Time will tell.”

Back on December 4, I wrote Disappointing Migraine Site: About.com. Even so, I had hope that the new guide, Mark Foley, D.O., just needed to gain his footing, and that the site would at least come close to what leading patient advocate Teri Robert had created there when she started the site for About in 2000.

Sadly, I have to say that the hope I had is dissipating. In his most recent newsletter, Foley featured an article about “persistent daily headaches.” His first paragraph reads:

“New persistent daily headaches (NPDH) can be a scary and difficult condition to develop. It is a form of chronic daily headache (CDH) that begins very abruptly. CDH refers to a number of headache types that occur more than 15 days in any given month. In the case of NPDH, these daily headaches develop over no more than a three-day period. “

In his article, he quotes the International Headache Society’s (IHS) International Classification of Headache Disorders, which sets the standard for diagnosing and classifying headache disorders. So far, so good.

The problem is that, by the very IHS criteria, this disorder is NOT “new persistent daily headaches (NPDH).” It’s “New Daily Persistent Headache (NDPH). It’s not a typo. He says it wrong consistently throughout his article.

My question is this: If he can’t get the name of the disorder right, should we trust the information in his article?

For myself, I think I’ll pass. After all, it’s not hard to find Teri Robert and her article on the same topic, New Daily Persistent Headache – The Basics.

No, I believe I’ve given Foley and About.com a fair chance, and I find them sorely lacking. It looks as if the Headaches / Migraine site may not be the only site that’s losing ground either. As you surf around, from time to time, you can come across sites with statistics that rank the various health networks. Just a few years ago, About.com’s health section consistently ranked in the top five. In the most recent of these rankings I’ve seen, not only has About.com dropped out of the top five, but health networks that have been around for a far shorter period of time ARE in the top five.

Should Foley or anyone else from About.com come across this, please know that I take no joy in writing this. The internet has become an unparalleled tool for patients who need health information. We can use all the good networks, all the good sites, we can get. No, I take no joy in this. In a way, the decline of this About.com site is something I watch with something akin to grief.

Rest in peace, About.com Headaches / Migraine. You had a great run while it lasted.

Best,
Arabella

Cluster Migraine Headaches?

Knowing what kind of Migraine or headache you have can be confusing. Plenty of people turn to the internet to try to figure out what they’re dealing with.

Doctors who specialize in treating Migraines or headaches usually stick to a diagnostic and classification listing developed by the International Headache Society. When doctors and people who write about headaches and Migraines stick to that, it’s far less confusing.

Today, I came across an article titled “Dealing With a Cluster Migraine Headache.” The first problem with this article is that there’s no such thing as a “cluster Migraine headache” if you stick to the IHS guidelines.  Beyond that, since the author uses that term as well as “cluster headache,” it’s impossible to tell what he or she is really talking about. The article also says it’s a “very common condition.” If it’s supposed to be about cluster headaches, that’s flat wrong. Cluster headaches are not common. If talking about a type of Migraine, there’s no way to know if that statement is correct since we can’t tell what the article is really about.

One of the more disturbing things about this article is that it appears on a site called “Headaches.” If someone is writing a whole site about “headaches,” I’d expect them to know what they’re talking about. This article proves that this writer does not.

Maybe they write this  nonsense just to have a place for lots of Google ads to click on so they can make money?

Whatever their reason for writing, I’d advise you to either avoid this site or at least never believe what it says unless you get it confirmed by a reliable source.

Best.
Arabella