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Highlights from the past 3 Months (September 2011 edition)

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These are some of the posts that have been popular with you over the past three months.  Now I notice that the posts asking for your tips are getting a lot of attention – but very few people are sharing their tips!  So click the link and give us some of your ideas. 🙂 Here’s the list, with the most popular posts listed first…

Migraine in Women and Children and Chronic Migraine Focus of Upcoming Research

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The Migraine Research Foundation is now open to new migraine research proposals.  If you’re researching an aspect of migraine, particularly related to migraine in children or women and chronic migraine, submit your proposal now, and you might qualify for a grant.

Here’s what the MRF announced – the application deadline is the 17th of October 2011.

The Migraine Research Foundation is committed to furthering the understanding of the causes and mechanisms of migraine, helping to develop improvements in treatment, and finding the cure. As a result, MRF is actively seeking to provide seed money grants for projects that are important, achievable, and innovative that will ultimately lead to better treatment and quality of life for migraine sufferers.

While MRF welcomes all proposals relevant to basic or clinical migraine research, this year we are particularly interested in projects related to three areas: (1) childhood migraine, (2) migraine in women, and (3) chronic migraine.

For more information, and to submit your application, visit this page at the Migraine Research Foundation: 2011 Request for Proposals Now Open

Your Tips – Making the Most of a Doctor’s Appointment

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All right, so we know we’re supposed to see a doctor and go to our follow-up appointments.  But how do we make sure those appointments are really worthwhile?  How do we make sure we’re communicating well with our doctor, and that she’s communicating well with us?  How do we prepare for an appointment, and how to we integrate what we’ve learned after the appointment is over?

It’s time to share your comments!  Leave a comment below, or share with us on Facebook.  Let’s help each other! 🙂

Cluster Headache and Sleep: is sodium oxybate the answer?

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A new study in Neurology suggests that sodium oxybate may be one of the future drugs for cluster headache sufferers.

Sleep and cluster medication?

We’ve long known about the connection between sleep disorders and cluster.  But typical medication for sleep has not been the miracle solution for cluster.  But sodium oxybate may be the exception to the rule.

Sodium oxybate is a type of drug known as a central nervous system depressant.  It’s used to help prevent daytime sleepiness in patients with narcolepsy (a sleep disorder – read about narcolepsy here).  Though we don’t know exactly how it works, it does help with sleep patterns.

The four patients in this long term study responded very well to the drug – their cluster attacks during the night drastically decreased and were less intense when they came.  Obviously, patients also slept better!

The results are very positive, and there’s great hope that this will help many other cluster patients.  Though the study was small, it must be remembered that this is a rare condition and, again, the results were very promising in all four patients.

Be sure to talk to your doctor about this option, and only get the drug from recognized sources, where it is pure and properly labelled.

via: New drug for cluster headaches

Want to fight Migraine? Just Show Up.

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A surprising new study in the journal Pain turns up an unexpected and simple way to predict which patients will respond to treatment.

Visit your doctor...

It’s always a mystery why some patients respond well to a certain treatment, while others do not.  The bottom line at the moment is that migraine is a complex disease, and every patient is very different (yes, we’re complex too!).

This study evaluated patients who were somewhat or very disabled due to a headache disorder.  The researchers studied a variety of factors to find out why some patients improved a lot and others not-so-much.

Was it social support?  Type of headache?  Race?

Nope.  The one thing that made the difference – that predicted whether or not someone would improve – was simply whether or not they actually attended the three follow-up appointments.

That’s right.  Patients who didn’t go to their follow-up appointments didn’t tend to improve as much.  That’s it.

So please, don’t go to a "bare minimum" of appointments.  Follow things through.  Listen to your doctor.  You may be surprised what a difference it makes.

via Showing up is half the battle – predictor of improvement of headache disability

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Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of each article, and to point you to further sources of information. However, this site is for informational purposes only and should never replace a visit to your doctor.