Editorial Reviews. From the Back Cover. Take the mystery and misery out of migraine pain 50 Ways to Control Migraines: Practical, Everyday Tips to Empower Migraine Sufferers to Live a Headache-Free Life (50 Ways Series) - Kindle.
Table of contents
Reducing the Burden of Headache. Jes Olesen Editor , Timothy J. Steiner Editor , Richard Lipton Editor. Management of Headache and Headache Medications. Useful Headache and Medical Books Headachetest.
Headache and medical books
Migraine The "Daily Telegraph" Author: Useful Headache and Medical Books. Migraine in Women Author: Pocket Reference to Triptans and Migraine Author: Guide to Migraine-Free Cooking Author: Eat Smart Beat Migraine Author: I was not impressed. Even discounting the fact this came out in , this book lacked depth. The numbered format is gimmicky. MaryKay rated it liked it Apr 26, Amy Brown rated it really liked it Jun 05, Habeba Karam Eissa rated it liked it Jul 03, Falak rated it liked it Oct 07, Jaimee rated it it was ok Apr 17, Roquinn added it Feb 27, Soorej Warrier marked it as to-read Feb 10, Manar Inprogress marked it as to-read Jul 01, Kathy marked it as to-read Aug 20, Jennifer Hilgers added it Mar 31, Feda added it Nov 07, Kari added it Apr 09, Some children will have temporary neurologic symptoms at the beginning of the headache.
With the addition of these symptoms, the child is considered to have migraine with aura. Numbness, tingling, garbled speech and other temporary symptoms can also occur. These symptoms generally precede the headache by several minutes but may last through the beginning of the headache. It is distinctly uncommon for them to last for minutes. In addition to the more obvious types of migraines, children may experience several other patterns of symptoms that we now recognize as part of the migraine picture. They are recognized as patterns that are likely in older children to become a migraine. Therefore, children who have these phenomena are likely to develop ordinary migraine.
A rare form of migraine is accompanied by severe weakness or even paralysis on one side of the body. This hemiplegic migraine may actually be seen in several close family members. Secondary headaches are headaches that are the symptom of an underlying illness.
Similar authors to follow
The most common causes of this type of headache include:. While structural brain problems — including abnormal vessels and even tumors — can cause headaches, it is uncommon for these to be the only symptom or sign. This is true when the headache problem has been present for a number of months and the child is otherwise well. A single headache can be the beginning of a long-term headache problem or more often the symptom of an illness usually viral.
DESCRIPTION OF TYPICAL HEADACHES
Certainly there are exceptions to this practice. A persistent headache that has begun after an injury is looked at much more critically and with a detailed physical examination. When a headache is prominent in the context of an obvious infectious illness, that illness is evaluated for the potential of being a more serious infection than it first may have appeared.
In the case of the child who ultimately turns out to have cyclic vomiting, the severe early vomiting will lead to a detailed gastro-intestinal investigation.
Search form
For example, if a child has a headache with the flu, the headache is treated as a symptom of the flu. However, if a child is having a migraine AND the flu, then the child has two illnesses for which the physician now has to provide care. While an individual headache can be attributed to a specific trigger, the tendency to have headaches as a response to things such as stress, foods, and weather is a primary biology characteristic of the child. For children with relatively frequent headaches, the cause and effect conclusion should be made cautiously and not until the pattern is clearly established.
The actual physical causes of migraine have become more clearly understood over the past two decades. In the early twentieth century, scalp over-activity of the scalp muscles was blamed for causing headaches. While excessive scalp muscle contraction can and does occur in the context of a migraine headache, this phenomenon is not the primary process but a secondary or even more distantly related part of the migraine headache. By the mid twentieth century, it was thought that constriction of blood vessels supplying parts of the brain caused selective areas of decreased blood flow and produced the warning signs or aura.
- .
- Headaches - Child Neurology Foundation.
- See a Problem?.
- Headache | Good Shepherd Rehab.
- Gringa - Beast of Mexico: A romantic suspense book: Book 1 (Series).
The pain of the headache was then the result of the reactive over dilation of brain blood vessels that stretched the nerves supplying them. Subsequently, some of this assumption was proved to be incorrect and other parts of this sequence were recognized as secondary to the headache and not the cause of the headache.
Of course some adults and most children do not have aura. For at least the last 20 years, evidence has built up to more clearly understand the processes that cause and maintain migraine headaches. It is recognized that in some individuals, selective nerve cells overreact to ordinary stimuli i.
This overreaction suppresses nearby brain activity which in some cases will produce the aura or warning that can precede migraine headaches. The pain the children then experience is related to the subsequent inflammation of the vessels covering the brain by small molecules called peptides. In addition, these substances over-activate the nerve fibers that carry sensation to the scalp, the face, the brain blood vessels, and the brain coverings.
This complex process, especially with the interplay between the various aspects, has given a variety of specific headache pain treatments as opposed to general body pain treatments. This distinction is critical in the approach to preventing and stopping migraine headaches. When pain is experienced — other than headaches — it is because of an injury or an infection.
In migraine headaches, pain is experienced, but nothing has been injured or infected. Evaluation of the Child with Headaches.
The additional evaluations that may be considered are not for making the diagnosis of headache, but for excluding disorders other than primary headache. The greatest number of x-rays and laboratory tests are likely to occur with the first headache, especially when there is no other illness to account for the headache.
Blood and urine tests, as well as spinal taps lumbar puncture , have not been found to be of value as a routine test in the diagnosis and evaluation of recurrent headaches. Electroencephalograms EEGs are not recommended in the routine evaluation or management of children with headaches. However, in the rare instance a child has an aura that goes on for some time or is very unusual, the EEG might be used to consider the possibility of a seizure disorder. Specifically, the EEG is not recommended to exclude a brain tumor or an aneurysm. In addition, EEG abnormalities can arise just from the migraine itself but fail to distinguish between those temporary abnormalities and the more persistent abnormalities that accompany brain tumors.
These are termed false positive results. They are not diagnostic or predictive and only lead to the consideration of more invasive and unnecessary tests. Neuroimaging, such as computed tomography CT and magnetic resonance imaging MRI , is not part of the routine diagnosis of headaches. In children experiencing a migraine with and without aura, abnormalities called white matter lesions WML have been found. It is important to understand, WML do not change; they are unrelated to the duration or severity of the headache problem and they have not been found to become strokes.
CT scans and MRIs require cooperation from the child i. Oral sedation can be used but is unpredictable as to how much sedation will be achieved. For many children the skill and services of an anesthesiologist are a necessary part of the neuroimaging. For example, a CT costs hundreds of dollars, while an MRI not including the anesthesiology procedure will be several thousand dollars.
The CT scans and MRIs are usually covered by insurance, but the variables of type of facility, specific medications used and many other considerations make it important to verify coverage in any situation especially in a non-emergency setting. While having headaches certainly hurts, it also produces a level of anxiety in the parent i. This reassurance can and will provide a sense of relief that will allow a parent to more calmly approach the problem as a headache in and of itself.
Once the additional understanding of the nature of the headache is achieved and the type of headache and the pattern of headache are established, what to do when the headache occurs and if needed how to prevent headaches from starting can be put in place. For all children, whether they have a few or many headaches, an analysis of what might be causing their headaches is necessary.
It is not, however, necessary to sort out what causes all of their headaches. Sometimes, identifying what factors are aggravating an underlying biologic condition is helpful. For some children the answer is obvious. Dietary precipitants are real, but unfortunately not that frequent. When they are present they are likely to be easily recognized. The items most often considered, include:. An aggressive elimination diet can be used to analyze any dietary triggers; however, it is difficult and unlikely to be tolerated in younger children or cooperated with by an adolescent. Conversely, the headache diary is a simple tool and is not as rigid as an elimination diet, which allows for more success.
The headache diary is a daily record of all activities, foods ,and medications that a child has experienced. Some of these dietary reactive headaches have a very short latency — the period between when the food item was eaten and the headache begins. For example, a child may experience headaches during a meal where MSG was ingested.
Eating salami or chocolate may produce a headache hours later. These time frames point out that the period between food ingested and headache may vary from minutes to hours. However, it is not reasonable to blame the headache on something that the child has eaten three days before. A headache diary is also helpful in assessing lifestyle traits that may contribute to headache, such as:.
An irregular or ineffective sleep pattern is accepted as ordinary in many adolescents.
For those children who experience migraines, the establishment of a regular sleep schedule is a necessity to minimize this aggravator of headaches. The ordinary stressors of home and school life may also trigger headaches in some children. Marital stress, as well as parental occupational issues, can translate into a physical reaction in children.
Academic and social pressures, such as social pressure to fit in, bullying or having to deal with lack of confidence, are elements that are not always seen by some parents as headache triggers.