Our knowledge of headache disorders continues to expand as new research reveals more and more information. The medical community is developing new treatment protocols for chronic headaches and patients are learning to reduce headache severity, frequency and/or duration through diet, exercise and other physical means. There was a time when headaches were considered either migraine or non-migraine. Unfortunately, this led to a common misunderstanding. Most people now use the word "migraine" to signify a "bad headache" but the term migraine was originally used to describe a specific neurological syndrome. Partly because of the common misunderstanding about the term "migraine" and partly because of newer research into headache types, many physicians now believe in a continuum of headache disorders and no longer separate a specific patient's headache into either a "migraine" or "non-migraine" category.

Please feel free to click on one of the links to the right to access additional information. 

Treatments are evolving. Currently, it is believed that daily pain-killer use may actually worsen headache or maintain it. In fact, recent studies have been consistent in their conclusion: daily pain medications can and do cause a rebound headache. In fact, recent studies show that using a pain killer just eight time in one month doubles the risk of the headache turning into a chronic daily headache! Yet, for those patients who have failed lesser means, the use of daily pain medication is within the standard of care. It is not clear yet whether the analgesically-mediated headache results from just the short-acting drugs or whether it results from long-acting drugs or both as well. Current treatments involve prophylactic medication, rare use of pain killers (unless other modalities have failed), and other modalities from exercise to stress reduction. Botox also can be helpful for headache disorders but currently is off label for that purpose. 

 

Headache links: These sites are solely responsible for their content. 

• American Academy of Neurology
  The American Academy of Neurology is the society of neurologists.


• Neuroscience Institute at California Pacific Medical Center, (please note that this office is a part of the Neuroscience Institute)
  
• National Headache Foundation: a society for headache investigation and treatment
  
• National Institutes of Health, headache information
  
• The American Headache Society and the AHS website for Headache Education

 

 

HEADACHE

 

Headaches and headache disorders fit into both the neurology and the pain management categories. Because of the complexity of headaches, however, a separate category is required.

 

Important news and information

Introduction to headache

Headache diagnosis

Headache modalities

Headache medications

Headache and other news

Headache help & links