Tension and migraine headaches are the 2nd and 3rd most common medical problem in the world after dental caries (cavities), according to a new study conducted by the World Health Organization (The Global Burden of Disease Survey 2010) and reported in the journal Headache. Tension-type headaches affects 20.1% of the world’s population and migraine, 14.7%. Migraine is the 7th most disabling of all medical conditions. Migraine sufferers spend more than 5% of all of their time having pain and other symptoms of this condition. Migraine is by far the most disabling of all neurological condition. Hundreds of millions of people in the world suffer unnecessarily from headaches. This is in part due to lack of awareness of the extent, the severity, and the impact of headaches, but also due to limited resources. The National Institutes of Health in the US allocates very little money to researching headache disorders and a disproportionally large amounts on neurological conditions such as epilepsy, MS, Parkinsons, and other. I am not suggesting that these other condition do not deserve to be studied, but suffering by many more people would be relieved by investing more money in headache research.
