The conclusion I have drawn from my experience with all of this, is that Drs are not willing to even think about a root cause because it must be related to migraine and we don’t understand migraine. I challenged a headache specialist once, that if I was to get 2 hours of her time, she could have my root cause figured out. It is as obvious to me as if I came in with a broken arm and pointed to it. I needed to make it obvious to her. She said I would have to commission a $1M study to figure it out.

Another headache specialist, after seeing me for several sessions, and probably at the 2 hour mark of listening to me, suddenly sat up in his chair one day in total surprise: “you don’t have a migraine !” I was absolutely dumbfounded that he had not figured it out sooner. Then he went on to tell me that half of his patients have chronic daily headache. To me this is a failure of the entire industry, not just any one Dr.

You say it is possible headaches cause hypertension. Sure and a million other things ! I say the industry needs to quit relying on a poorly understood migraine phenomenon and try solving some simpler headaches that beg to be solved. When these are solved, it will shed important light on what goes on in a migraine attack. They have got it backwards in trying to get the migraine process to shed light on milder more constant headaches. There is not doubt that as my daily blood pressure rises each day, it causes my headache. I have read several of Silberstein’s articles and I would have this to say about his comment for extremely high pressures needed to damage the protective reflex of a blood vessel: Is it possible that some of us have damaged vasculature that has been damaged over a long period of time from a variety of causes in addition to over pressurization ?

My point with all of this is that there seems to be many headaches out there that can be solved relatively easy. Why not start there ? Then publish a simple case study for the benefit of the rest of us.

I have been undiagnosed with “uncontrollable” high blood pressure. That said, my doc has recently increased my meds (Benicar 40, Bystolic 10, Tekturna 150 working towards 300) and I am experiencing regular headaches and my visual acuity seems diminished. Could this be side effects of the bp meds, or something that I should either wait out or deal with immediately? Every trip to my doc is over $100 even with insurance, so I’m trying to evaluate when to go.

Maybe I stay on this computer too long and it gives me headaches which causes my blood pressure to go up!

Nathan