Getting better treatment faster
You’ve been struggling with these strange symptoms for a long time. You’ve tried aspirin, Tylenol, and several other over-the-counter painkillers. You tried Aunt Martha’s tea and Cousin Bill’s stretching regime. Finally, it’s time to go to the doctor. And what do you hear? "Take two aspirin and call me in the morning"!
It’s not as cliché as it may sound. It seems many doctors still start treating severe headaches and migraine by prescribing low-potency over-the-counter painkillers. Not that there’s anything wrong with them – they help a lot of people. But by the time most people go to the doctor, they’ve tried all the basic stuff, and need more careful treatment.
In their recent book Migraine and Other Headaches, Drs Young and Silberstein talk about a study that was done on the care doctors give right from the start. Some start with the cheaper, less effective, non-specific drugs. Then they move on to the more targeted treatment. Others start with the targeted specific treatment right from the start. For example, for migraine they would start by using migraine-specific medication and treatment.
So who had the better results? In this case, the battle seems to go to the bold. When targeted treatments were tried from the beginning, the eventual outcome was better. What’s a targeted treatment? Well, for example, using Triptan medications for migraine, such as Maxalt or Zomig. These are designed specifically for migraine.
So when you go to the doctor, make sure they take the time to hear what you’ve tried and what your symptoms are. Why waste more time and money on what doesn’t work?
11 September 2009 @ 5:34 am
I am not sure about those findings. Have you heard about Medication Overuse Headaches? All painkillers, Triptans included, if taken “too much”, will cause Medication Overuse Headaches. The doctors never warned me about this but it took just few years after starting the Triptans and I started to have MOH. The medication are not a treatment, it just helps to get rid of a single attack.
I think you are doing an amazing job of collecting all this information, but there is so much focus here on medication and so little about other options.
After over 40 years of headaches/migraines (I really don’t care how they are called) I learned few things:
1. Migraine is not a disease it is a genetic neurological condition, it is more like a symptom. We never look for a cure for fever; we look for the cause of the fever and treat the cause and not the symptom. The causes of migraine can vary from person to person and for the same person from one attack to another. We have pills to stop the migraine pain the same way we have pills to lower fever.
2. Each one of us needs to find out the different causes for his migraines. This requires a lot of attention while we suffer, not the best time. Knowing that this migraine episode is another lesson, might help.
3. The pills we take to stop the pain may become the cause of more headaches; this is called Medication Overuse Headache (MOH).
4. We can learn to stop the migraine when it starts. It requires a patient learning process.
5. We can lower the frequency of migraines. Again this is something every person should find out for himself.
6. It is important to share what we find so we can learn from each other.
Hana, Israel