Resources

22 February 2010

How Disabled is your Child with Migraine?

One of the most popular tools for measuring migraine disability is the MIDAS test. It’s a helpful way to understand how migraine is impacting your life, and also useful to discuss with your doctor so she’ll know what treatment will be best for you.

Did you know that there’s a MIDAS test specifically for children? The questions are specifically designed and tested for ages 4 to 18. It’s called the PedMIDAS (Pediatric Migraine Disability Assessment).

The PedMIDAS is designed to be administered by a parent or guardian to the child. At the end of just a few questions, you will get a score that indicates anything from severely disabled to little or no disability.

The PedMIDAS also asks simply about headache frequency and severity, which will also be helpful for your doctor.

If your child has never taken the PedMIDAS, take a few minutes to do it now. It’s a free download from the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Be sure to read the helpful tips on the main page before actually taking the quiz (which is in pdf format): Visit PedMIDAS download page

26 November 2009

1% Thursday: Pomodoro!

James Resources, Tips 2

This week, try using the Pomodoro Technique to keep moving.

The what?! Well, the Pomodoro Technique is actually a time management technique developed by Francesco Cirillo in 1992. The concept is fairly simple – you work at a certain task for 25 minutes (using a timer), then take a break. Every 4 cycles you take a longer break.

Of course there’s more to it than that, but that’s the foundational idea.

What does this have to do with migraine or headache? Well, a number of things. First, overdoing it at any task can be a migraine or headache trigger. Sitting in one position, being on your feet too long, and so on, can cause all kinds of problems.

Second, sometimes those with chronic headache become very overwhelmed with the tasks of the day. The Pomodoro Technique can help break things into chunks, and give you a sense of accomplishment.

The best news is that there are all kinds of Pomodoro resources absolutely free! On the official Pomodoro Technique website, you can download the book on the technique for free, join groups, find online timers, and lots more! And watch out for the new book coming out later this month: Pomodoro Technique Illustrated: Can You Focus – Really Focus – for 25 Minutes?

Give it a try, then come back and share your experiences.

What is 1% Thursday?

Every Thursday at Headache and Migraine News (weather permitting) we’ll talk about one measurable, practical thing we can do to make our lives just 1% better. Usually it will be something very easy, sometimes it will be a challenge. Let us know if you try it, or share an idea of your own – and maybe a year from now we’ll see that things have really changed for the better!

21 November 2009

Migraine Art: The Migraine Experience from Within (review)

James Resources 0

It may not be obvious to everyone why Migraine Art: The Migraine Experience from Within is such an important book. But this magnum opus from Klaus Podoll and Derek Robinson is a key to migraine research that has been a long time coming.

I’ve been dealing with migraine symptoms for well over 20 years. I’ve read countless pages of research, and innumerable experiences from migraine and headache sufferers from around the world.

Even after all that, there’s still more to learn about our symptoms. Sometimes we ourselves don’t realize consciously what we’re experiencing – maybe because it’s become so "normal". Or we fail to realize how different someone else’s symptoms are, assuming everyone is like us.

That’s one reason why migraine art is so powerful. When we don’t know how to put things into words, sometimes we can relay information more completely through art. The works in Migraine Art that have been collected over many years tell us a story that we rarely get from research and statistics.

Our understanding of the brain has come a long way in the last 20 years. But in some ways, what we’ve learned has brought up more questions than answers. Migraine art has given us a glimpse into the brain that no scan can yet give us.

For example, in 1941, US neuroscientist Karl S. Lashley amazingly predicted the concept of the concept of cortical spreading depression, by drawing and timing his own visual aura experiences. This idea of the "brain storm" that impacts migraine is one of the most modern theories of how migraine works.

Throughout this beautiful book of full colour pages, Podoll and Robinson analyze migraine art that demonstrates not only various symptoms, but also triggers, and even how migraine impacts life in general.

You may not see the same statistics here that you’ll see in other research. The point is not to give an overview of all migraine research, but instead to see migraine in the light of the art. However, the book is carefully foot noted and connected to research, again making it an important contribution not just to patients but to the researchers and medical professionals as well.

If you want to understand your own symptoms better, and those of others, there are few books that will offer more insight. This is the work on migraine art from the top experts in the field, based on many years of careful research.

You may be wondering how Migraine Art differs from the also excellent Migraine Expressions: A Creative Journey through Life with Migraine. Migraine Expressions is also a colourful book full of migraine art, but it also includes poetry and prose. It’s focused simply on the works of patients, and is easy to pick up and flip through.

Migraine Art: The Migraine Experience from Within is a more scholarly work. It’s more focused on specific symptoms and their expression in art, and goes into detail about what the art means. It’s emphasis is on pictures (more than 300 of them!), not writing (although it includes descriptions of the art by migraineurs). You’ll learn much more about the history and use of migraine art, and symptoms you’ve probably never heard discussed other places.

Don’t take this book to be the end-all of migraine research. On the other hand, if you want to get an intimate glimpse of migraine from a unique perspective, I highly recommend this book. It’s also a must have for serious researchers – a work unlike any other that will be valued for years to come.

Migraine Art thus stands as the definitive work of its kind–an incomparable collection of material on the visual and other phenomena of migraine, and, by implication, on the brain processes which underlie these. It will serve to reassure, enlighten, and inspire…
– Dr. Oliver Sacks, from the Forward

Migraine Art: The Migraine Experience from Within now available here

19 November 2009

1% Thursday: What are you taking your medication with?

James Medications, Resources, Tips 0

This week – double check what you’re taking your medication with.

What am I talking about? Well, most of us are familiar with the fact that some medication should be taken with food, some on an empty stomach, and so on. Sometimes this impacts how the drugs work in your body. Other times it’s just a matter of what’s more comfortable for you.

But there are other issues that you may or may not hear from your doctor. Taking certain medications along with supplements, for example, could be a problem. You may find both work better if they’re taken at different times. Or you may need to cut out a supplement while taking a certain medication.

There is increasing concern about taking medications with juice – not just grapefruit juice, the most famous, but other juices such as apple and orange. Various chemical interactions could mean you end up with more or less medicine than you bargained for – both a serious problem. Try sticking to water.

Even taking some supplements together can be a problem. For example, many people take calcium with magnesium, not realizing that you need to take magnesium for migraine without calcium (read more here).

So – quick tips:

Try taking your medication with water, not juice
Make sure your doctor is aware of all the medications and supplements you’re taking
Check a reliable source for yourself to investigate possible interactions. Good online sources include Medline Plus (English and Spanish, includes herbs) and MedBroadcast, and others. I prefer to have a published work on hand, and like The Pill Book.

What is 1% Thursday?

Every Thursday at Headache and Migraine News (weather permitting) we’ll talk about one measurable, practical thing we can do to make our lives just 1% better. Usually it will be something very easy, sometimes it will be a challenge. Let us know if you try it, or share an idea of your own – and maybe a year from now we’ll see that things have really changed for the better!

26 October 2009

A Review of Menstrual Migraine (the book)

James Resources 0

I liked this book. You probably wouldn’t, but I sure did.

All right, let me qualify that a little bit. The book I’m talking about is the brand new Menstrual Migraine, edited by Dr Susan Hutchinson and Dr B. Lee Peterlin. And you may like it after all – if you’re a health professional, like a doctor or nurse. That’s really the target of the book. But let me give you a bit of an overview.

Actually, the back of the book gives a very good summary:

Tailored to the needs of busy health-care professionals treating female patients in the primary care setting, the book focuses on essential clinical information for physicians, nurse practitioners, and assistants in family practice, internal medicine and OB/GYN.

Using some of the statistics in this book, it’s quite possible that 10% of women have migraine related to their menstrual cycles. That’s not 10% of women with migraine, that’s 10% of the general population! So as a health professional, you can see why it would be important to have the best information about something that impacts 1 in 10 of the women you see. Of course, it will probably be more than 1 in 10, because those with menstrual migraine will, I hope, be more likely to see their doctor.

And this book is exactly that – the latest, cutting edge information about migraine and specifically menstrual migraine, in a small package. The book is only 95 pages including indexes. It’s actually a series of write-ups by various experts on related topics, such as:

Hormonal therapy and menstrual migraine
Tips and pearls for the diagnosis of migraine and menstrually related migraine
Pharmacotherapy
Nonpharmacological interventions for the management of menstrually related migraine

Though of course even the experts don’t always agree with one another, I was very impressed that this was really cutting-edge information. Published only last year, Menstrual Migraine has brought together the latest in research so that you can get a quick overview of where the science is and where it’s going, and how it relates to treatment in a practical way.

You can already see from the titles above, the book doesn’t make an attempt to be accessible to the layperson. There’s a lot of technical language, scientific charts and numbers, and terms and short hand that most people will have trouble following without some medical background. But the book is very well organized for those who will make the best use of it.

With so many out-dated or poorly researched works out there, this one was a relief to read. I know I will keep it handy and will be using it as a reference frequently (in fact I’ve already found myself reaching for it to check on various things).

Menstrual Migraine also includes some handy appendices, with further resources, questionnaires for use with patients, and headache diaries.

Menstrual Migraine, a part of the Oxford American Pain Library, is a small handbook that provides practical, up-to-date information on a widespread issue. It would be of value to every doctor and health professional that have female patients, and certain other people who want to see essential aspects of the latest research.

Note: What’s with all the reviews!? In case you’re wondering, I made it a project to collect some books over the summer to review. Of course, I had no time over the summer to actually review them, so I’m catching up over the fall! That’s the reason for the sudden influx of reviews. I hope you’ll find the resources helpful. I’ll probably just have one more book review in the near future, and then things will slow down for a while. 🙂