health 79

Migraine ranks in the top 20 of the world's most disabling medical illnesses, yet is underreported. While hallucinations around certain odors, noises and tastes have been known to occur during a migraine, these symptoms are not included in the International Headache Society classification. To garner more insights into these manifestations, researchers at Montefiore and Einstein tapped The Daily Migraine, a consumer-facing online forum to query 678 respondents through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter three times over three weeks, revealing new insights about experiences with certain tastes, sounds or smells in association with migraine attacks. Queries around olfactory hallucinations , most notably unpleasant smells like cigarette smoke and animal scents were what those with migraine most searched online. Queries also revealed ringing as the predominant migraine-associated sound. Unpleasant tastes, specifically a metallic taste, were also commonly searched. "As researchers w...

According to the Professional Association of German Neurologists (BDN), migraine headaches have a high prevalence in the general population, and affect approximately one in five women. While migraines are known to be linked to an increased risk of stroke, only a few studies exist that demonstrate the relationship of migraines with increased risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality. A team of US and German researchers have now analyzed data from more than 115,500 women enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study II. The participants were aged between 25 and 42 years at baseline and free from cardiovascular disease and, of them, 17,531 (just over 15%) reported a physician's diagnosis of migraine. Between 1989 and 2011, cardiovascular events were observed in 1,329 of these women; 223 died as a result. "Our analysis suggests that migraine should be considered an important risk marker for cardiovascular disease, particularly in women," concludes Prof. Kurth, adding that: ...

A wide variety of pharmacological interventions such as opiates, benzodiazepines , and prophylactic medications have been described that offer partial relief to migraine sufferers. Reviews have also described a variety of empirically supported non-pharmacological approaches to preventing or stopping headaches. Recent randomized controlled trials have demonstrated the efficacy of meditation-based interventions as a treatment for headache pain. Though spiritual meditation has been found to reduce the frequency of migraines and physiological reactivity to stress, little is known about how introducing a spirituality component into a meditation intervention impacts use of analgesic medicine. The results from the study support previous research suggesting that spiritual meditation may be more effective for pain tolerance and migraine coping than non-spiritual meditation alternatives. In this study, 92 meditation-naïve participants with frequent migraines (>2 per month) were randomly ...

he study, "Headache Disorders May Be a Risk Factor for the Development of New Onset Hypothyroidism" is currently available in the online edition of  Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain . Hypothyroidism occurs when the body can't make sufficient thyroid hormone causing individuals to suffer from mood swings, weight gain, hair loss , fatigue, constipation and irregular menstrual cycles. "Our study is one of the largest studies published to date suggesting that headache disorders are a risk factor for the future development of hypothyroidism," explains Andrew Martin, lead author and a fourth-year medical student at the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine. Andrew Martin, his father, Vincent Martin, MD, and colleagues at the UC College of Medicine, looked at data from 8,412 people enrolled in the Fernald Medical Monitoring Program ( FMMP ), a 20-year medical monitoring project designed to examine health outcomes of residents living near a ...