Real Help for Real Headaches
Oct 13 at 6:06pm by Aileen
I don’t know about you, but in my family there is an unfortunate tendency to develop serious headaches. Two sisters have suffered migraines since childhood, my daughter gets them too, and her son has fairly regular headaches that end up sending him to his bed in pain. Lots of people get headaches not quite so severe, and various headache remedies have become part of urban legend lore as well as accounting for billions of dollars’ worth of pharmaceutical company profits over the years.
Sometimes it’s not just a matter of “take two aspirin, call me in the morning.” Luckily, Stephanie over at the blog One Big Health Nut has researched a total of 23 Ways To Get Rid Of & Prevent Headaches. These have solid science behind them and links to demonstrate that, so it’s definitely a blog post worthy of checking out and keeping in your bookmarks if you or anyone in your family suffers from debilitating headaches.
I was gratified to see that our own long-time “family recipes” are indeed supported by good science. Such as drinking lots of water, dehydration being a cause of headaches. Limiting caffine and alcohol, eating regularly and staying away from fried foods too. The only thing missing that I would add to the list is one that Stephanie semi-includes. She advises that a paste of cinnamon and water applied to the brow and temples can help relieve headaches, and this is supported enough to use if you can. The same idea using hot pepper powder has worked well in my own family, the capsaicin stimulating scalp circulation. Which I presume is the method that works with cinnamon paste.
This very useful resource is excellent, so do keep it on file!
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Objectively Measuring Subjective Pain
Nov 16 at 6:06pm by Aileen
Doctors involved in treating pain have long been stifled by the subjectivity of pain – relying on patients to rate their own pain, but having no objective way to measure how intense the pain really is. The journal Nature reported on November 14 that they have discovered a signal from the brain that does objectively correlate with the amount of pain a person is experiencing.
The researchers from Oxford University in Britain believe that the signal couldbe used to refine pain relief techniques, offering better treatment for people in pain. The signal is identified as low frequency brain waves emanating from two regions deep in the brain. The more pain being experienced, the longer the waves last.
“It is an objective measure that correlates with a subjective measure,” said Morten Kringelbach, head of the research team. They hope this signal could help refiine deep-brain stimulation for chronic pain management through the development of a stimulator that only kicks in when these low frequency signals begin.
The ability to treat chronic pain directly without the use of drugs that affect consciousness or depress general physiology would be a significant advancement in medical care, alleviating the suffering of millions of people every year.
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