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74% of girls and 52% of boys have headaches at age 17, according to a Finnish study of 6,262 twins. At age 11, 60% of girls and 59% of boys had headaches at least once a month. The prevalence of weekly headaches increase d in girls from 16%...

Vitamin D deficiency is often found in patients with headaches and neuralgia, which I’ve already mentioned in previous posts. Chronic pain patients with low vitamin D levels were also found to have poor exercise tolerance, making their rehabilitation...

Migraines in blind people are made worse by light, according to Dr. Burstein and his associates at Harvard. Rami Burstein is one of the leading headache researchers who often asks questions no one else thought to ask. More importantly, he often...

The fact that two out of three pregnant women stop having headaches during pregnancy is well established, however a study by Norwegian researchers published in Headache provides some additional details. Women with headaches who are pregnant for the...

Childhood abuse or neglect was reported by 58% of 1,348 migraine sufferers according to a study published in the current issue of Headache. Emotional abuse and neglect was particularly common. Patients with other chronic pain conditions also have...

Acupuncture increases connections between different areas of the brain, according to Dhond and other Korean researchers who published their findings in the journal Pain. They compared the effect of true and sham acupuncture in healthy volunteers...

I’ve written in a previous post that people exposed to pleasant music feel less pain than people listening to unpleasant music or to no music at all. Some studies have suggested that happy music (typically music with faster tempo and major mode) is...

Alcohol can trigger a headache immediately or soon after it is consumed or the next morning. Some people develop a headache only from a particular type of alcohol, such as red wine, rum, or beer, while others cannot drink any form of alcohol without...

Migralex is finally available to all headache sufferers. This is the first new brand of headache medicine in 15 years. After years of painstaking research, complicated development work, and manufacturing setup it is very gratifying to see Migralex...

Holiday headaches are quite avoidable, but to avoid them you have to have willpower. I know myself that it is hard to resist all the chocolate that surrounds you during the holidays. If you have a choice, pick milk chocolate over dark. There is no...

A blinded study comparing Botox with Topamax for the prevention of migraine headaches was conducted by Drs. Jaffri and Mathew and published in the current issue of Headache. They enrolled 60 patients and divided them into two groups – one group received...

Headache Relief is a new iPhone app which I developed to help patients better manage their headaches. The main feature of the app is a headache diary. A summary of all your diary entries can be emailed to yourself or your doctor in an Excel...

Botox appears to be effective for peripheral nerve pain according to a study by French researchers. This finding is consistent with my observation that injecting Botox into the skin of the top of the head in patients with headaches relieves...

Needle-free injection of sumatriptan (Imitrex) was tested for its ease of use and for its bioequivalence in a study led by Dr. Jan Brandes. The new device that provides needle-free subcutaneous injections was easy to use and if injected into the...

Dr. Oz : “Like Alexander Mauskop, I believe that magnesium can help—it relaxes arteries and muscles in the body, both of which can help with headaches”. This statement in the latest issue of O, The Oprah Magazine is not very surprising coming...

Botox can relieve pain of occipital neuralgia, according to a pilot study by neurologists in Ohio, published in Headache. Occipital neuralgia is a painful condition that manifests itself by pain in the back of the head, usually on one side...

Some migraine patients are more disturbed and disabled by migraine aura symptoms than by the headache itself. Some people do not even have pain but only auras. In the majority the aura is visual and consists of squiggly lines, flashing lights...

A new treatment for migraines is very effective and well tolerated, according to a paper published in Neurology. Two years ago I mentioned on this blog that this new migraine drug did well in Phase II trial and now the results of Phase III also appear...

Two large trials of Botox provide unequivocal proof of its efficacy in the treatment of chronic migraine headaches. The results of these two double-blind, placebo-controlled studies (I participated in one of the two trials) of onabotulinumtoxinA (Botox)...

Migraine headaches are more frequent in people who suffer from allergic rhinitis and who have more than 10 positive skin allergy tests. This finding by Dr. Martin and his colleagues presented at the International Headache Congress last week is not...

Vitamin B12 (cyanocobalamine) deficiency is known to cause a wide variety of neurological symptoms. It also seems to produce facial neuralgia, according to a report presented at the International Headache Congress in Philadelphia a week ago...

Migraine headaches are three times more common in patients with multiple sclerosis than in people of similar age and gender without MS. Ilya Kister and his colleagues at NYU who established this fact make a very important point – multiple sclerosis...

Migrainous vertigo seems to respond to intravenous infusion of a high dose of corticosteroids, according to a report in the latest issue of Headache by a group of Indian doctors. Two of their patients had intermittent episodes of severe vertigo...

A blood pressure medication telmisartan (Micardis) was shown to be effective in the prevention of migraine headaches by a group of German researchers led by H-C Diener. Several blood pressure medications have been proven to prevent migraine...

Vertigo can induce a migraine attack in migraine sufferers, according to a study published in Neurology. In this study researchers induced vertigo in patients who had a history of migraines and in a control group. Almost half of those who had...

Good news for adolescents with chronic daily headaches (CDH) was reported by Taiwanese researchers followed 122 kids, aged 12 to 14 who were diagnosed with this condition. A year later 40% still had CDH, and after 2 years, 25% had symptoms...

In my post 2 years ago I wrote about surgery for migraines and the many reasons why Botox injections is a better option than surgery to permanently cut nerves and muscles. I also wrote that there were no controlled studies to show that surgery...

High homocysteine levels increase the risk of cardiovascular disease (strokes and heart attacks) and can be reduced by folic acid and vitamin B12 (cyanocobalamine). A study by Spanish doctors published in Headache found elevated homocysteine...

Medications used for the preventive treatment of migraine headaches can cause weight loss, but more often cause weight gain. An interesting study by Dr. Bigal and his colleagues, just published in Cephalalgia looked at this effect of drugs in...

Trigeminal neuralgia is an extremely painful condition which causes severe electric shock-like pain in one or more branches of the trigeminal nerve. The 3 branches are mandibular, in the lower jaw, maxillary, in the upper jaw, and ophthalmic...