Migraine is a form of headache. It is a neurologic disease of vascular origin characterized by attacks of sharp pain involving (usually) one half of the skull and accompanied by nausea, vomiting, photophobia and occasionally visual (or rarely other) disturbances known as aura. The symptoms and their timing vary considerably among migraine suffers, and to a lesser extent from one migraine attack to the next.
Migraine is caused by the constriction of the blood vessels of the head and neck. Classical migraine (migraine with aura) is forerun by a group of symptoms called aura, whereas common migraine does not have any indicator for the impending headache. A few (perhaps fortunate) people actually get aura without migraine.
Migraine can accompany, in some cases, another type of headache called tension headache. Migraine often runs in families and starts in adolescence, although some research indicates that it can start in early childhood or even in utero. Migraine occurs more frequently in women than men, and is most common between ages 15-45, with the frequency of attacks declining with age in most cases.
Clue to migraine headache cause BBC - December 26, 2007
Migraine shows up in the eyes Live Science - July 5, 2006
Adults who suffer from bouts of migraine without aura have
slightly narrower retinal blood vessels than adults without migraine.
Reuters - March 15, 2004
Acupuncture is a useful, cost-effective treatment for patients who suffer from chronic headaches or migraine, American researchers said on Monday.
In one of the largest randomized studies to assess the effectiveness of the ancient Chinese treatment, scientists found it worked better than just conventional treatments alone.
"People using acupuncture had fewer headaches, less severe headaches and they used less health resources over the course of the following year," Dr Andrew Vickers, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said in an interview.
The scientists compared acupuncture plus standard treatment to normal therapy alone in 401 patients in England and Wales who suffered from headaches several days each week. Their research is published online by the British Medical Journal.
Patients who had been assigned acupuncture plus standard treatment received up to 12 treatments over three months.
Initially there was not much difference between the two groups but at the end of the year-long trial the scientist noticed a big change.
Patients receiving acupuncture had 22 fewer days of headaches per year, used 15 percent less medication, made 25 percent fewer visits to their family doctors and took fewer days off sick than the other group.
There were not many side effects and Vickers and his colleagues also found that the treatment was cost effective.
Acupuncture was first used in China about 2,000 years ago, according to Vickers. It involves inserting very fine needles into the skin at specific points in the body. It is one of the most popular forms of complementary medicine and has been shown to relieve nausea and pain.
German researchers have also said it could help women undergoing fertility treatment to conceive.
January 2002 - Reuters - NY
Can't beat that headache? Why not try an incantation to falcon-headed Horus, or a soothing poultice of "Ass's grease"? According to researchers, 3,500-year-old papyri show ancient Egyptians turning to both their gods and medicine to banish headache pain.
"The border between magic and medicine is a modern invention; such distinctions did not exist for ancient healers," explain Dr. Axel Karenberg, a medical historian, and Dr. C. Leitz, an Egyptologist, both of the University of Cologne, Germany.
In a recent issue of the journal Cephalalgia, the researchers report on their study of papyrus scrolls dating from the early New Kingdom period of Egyptian history, about 1550 BC.
Ancient Egyptian healers had only the barest understanding of anatomy or medicine. Indeed, while the head was considered the "leader" of the body, the brain itself was considered relatively unimportant--as evidenced by the fact that it was usually discarded during the mummification process.
Headache, that timeless bane of humanity, was usually ascribed to the activity of "demons," the German researchers write, although over time Egyptian physicians began to speculate that problems originating within the body, such as the incomplete digestion of food, might also be to blame.
Once beset with a headache, those living under the pharaohs turned to their gods for help. One incantation sought to evoke the gods' empathy, imagining that even immortals suffered headache pain.
"'My head! My head!' said Horus," reads one papyrus. "'The side of my head!' said Thoth. 'Ache of my forehead,' said Horus. 'Upper part of my forehead!' said Thoth."
In this way, Karenberg and Leitz write, "the patient is identified with (the gods) Horus and Thoth," the latter being the god of magicians and wise men.
The incantation continues with the sun god Ra ordering the patient to recover "up to your temples," while the patient threatens his "headache demons" with terrible punishments ("the trunk of your body will be cut off").
Still, the gods may have ignored the pleas of many patients, who also turned to medicine for relief. According to one ancient text, these included a poultice made of "skull of catfish," with the patient's head being "rubbed therewith for four days."
Other prescriptions included stag's horn, lotus, frankincense and a concoction made from donkey called "Ass's grease."
Even these remedies could be divinely inspired, however. On one 4,000-year-old scroll, a boastful druggist claims that his headache cure is prepared by the goddess Isis herself.
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