New York Headache blog

Atul Gawande is a surgeon at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a professor at Harvard Medical School. He is also a very talented writer who has written four books and has been writing for the New Yorker since 1998...

Vestibular migraine has been also called migraine-associated vertigo or dizziness and migrainous vertigo. Diagnostic criteria, according to the international headache classification, include a current or past history of migraine...

Severe headache is a common symptom of acute glaucoma. It comes from a sudden increase in the intra-ocular pressure caused by the closure of channels that drain fluid from the eyeball. This headache can be similar to a...

Many chiropractors advertise their success in treating migraine headaches. Norwegian researchers conducted a scientific study of chiropractic manipulation for migraine headaches in 104 patients. They divided patients into three groups...

Vitamin C deficiency appears to be more common in people with back pain, according to a study just published in the journal Pain by Canadian researchers. Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is important for collagen formation and collagen is...

Many women are more likely to have migraines around the time of their menstrual period and in some, those migraines can be more severe. Previous studies have determined that women living together often synchronized their...

Restless leg syndrome (RLS) has been reported to be more common in patients with migraines. I wrote about this association in a previous post about 4 years ago. Another study, just published in The Journal of Headache and Pain...

Functional MRI (fMRI) imaging has been a powerful tool for visualizing processing of information in the brain. This technique is based on the observation that the MRI signal changes with changes in the amount of blood flowing...

Two leading headache experts, Drs. Richard Lipton and Dawn Buse of the Montefiore Headache clinic gave positive comments on the report published in Pain and described in my recent post. Another headache specialist from Texas...

Beta blockers, such as propranolol (Inderal) and timolol (Blocadren) are the oldest drugs for the prevention of migraine headaches. They’ve been used for this indication for the past 50 years. Calcium channel blockers are not as effective...

According to large epidemiological studies, migraine sufferers are 2-3 times more likely to develop depression, anxiety and other psychiatric disorders than those without migraines. And it is a bidirectional relationship, meaning that those...

Acupuncture for the treatment of migraines has been studied in dozens of clinical trials. A 2012 study mentioned in a previous blog post described a rigorous trial done in 480 patients with highly positive results. The largest, albeit uncontrolled study...

About 6% of young children suffer from migraine headaches. After puberty, this number triples to 18% in girls and remains at 6% in boys. Several abortive drugs (drugs taken as needed), such as rizatriptan (Maxalt) and zolmitriptan (Zomig)...

Medical marijuana was legalized in New York in February of this year. Since then, I’ve prescribed it to over 30 patients and about a third of them have found it to be effective. We are planning an observational study to determine which...

We are big proponents of non-drug treatments, including a variety of vitamins, minerals, and herbal supplements. However, potential liver damage by butterbur is why we do not recommend this supplement, even though I was one...

Nausea is a very common symptom that accompanies migraine attacks. Effective treatment of migraine with a drug like sumatriptan often stops the headache, nausea, and other associated symptoms. However, sometimes pain...

Hypothyroidism, or under-active thyroid is known to cause headaches or worsen pre-existent migraines. Correcting this deficiency with medications such as Synthroid or Armour Thyroid often improves headaches...

Migraine with aura is known to be associated with an increased risk of diseases of arteries, such as strokes, heart attacks and diseases of peripheral blood vessels. This risk is further increased by estrogen-containing contraceptives...

One of the most common problems with Botox injections given for chronic migraines is that doctors use the standard protocol without adjusting the dose. One of my patients is an 83 year old woman with chronic migraines who has...

Medical marijuana reduces the number of prescriptions written by doctors, according to a recent study published in Health Affairs. The researchers at the University of Georgia in Athens looked at all prescriptions filled by Medicare participants...

CGRP migraine drugs remain on track to get an approval from the FDA within two years. My first post on these drugs appeared in 2007. The first product in this family was tested for the prevention and acute treatment of migraines...

Vitamin B12 was the subject of an article in the New York Times by Jane Brody entitled, Vitamin B12 as Protection for the Aging Brain. However, she mentions that “insufficient absorption of B12 from foods may even be common among...

Living in areas where fracking takes place doubles the risk of having migraines, as well as fatigue and sinus symptoms. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a water-based method of extracting natural gas from deep under the ground...

Three times as many women are afflicted by migraines as men, according to many large studies. However, 6% of men do suffer from migraines and that means 9 million American men. However, in our clinic, instead of 75%, over 90%...

Intravenous magnesium relieves acute migraine attacks in patients with magnesium deficiency, which is present in half of migraine sufferers, according to the study we published in 1995 in the journal Clinical Science...

Recently, a patient of mine reported that cramp bark has significantly improved her menstrual migraines. Cramp bark is a common shrub with red berries. Its bark has been used for over 100 years for muscle cramps, menstrual...

Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) with an electrode implanted in the neck is an FDA-approved treatment for depression and epilepsy, when these conditions do not respond to medications. Since antidepressant and anti-epilepsy medications...

Menopause often brings relief to female migraine sufferers. However, many women have worsening of their migraines during the transition. This is thought to be due to the fluctuating levels of estrogen, which is also responsible...

Several of my patients with trigeminal neuralgia (TN) responded to Botox injection (although some have not). My previous post on this topic four years ago discussed a study involving 40 patients with TN, of whom 68% responded to Botox...

An ENT colleague recently referred to me a patient with very persistent sensation of pressure in her sinuses. She’d had sinus surgery which relieved pain in one of her sinuses, but the pressure sensation persisted...