a publication OF THE east bay headache support group

a member of the American Council for Headache Education (ACHE) support group network

 

Volume 11, Issue 1

January, 2006

 

January 10, 2006 Meeting: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly:  Rx Treatment for Migraines

 The East Bay Headache Support Group is proud of its ten years of providing education and support to headache sufferers, and on Tuesday evening, January 10, we will celebrate our anniversary with an exciting speaker...and a little party.

 We are asking that you come 15 minutes early this time (7:15 p.m.) to enjoy refreshments and purchase raffle tickets, and then Dr. Lori Reisner, a professor from UCSF’s School of Pharmacy, will speak.  To conclude the evening’s festivities, donated prizes will be raffled off, including a relaxing music CD, stress journal, and gift certificates to Starbucks, Macy’s, Sharper Image, Circuit City, Gap, and restaurants.  Tickets are $1 each, $5 for 6, or $10 for 12.

We are meeting in the Sequoia/Sterns Conference Room downstairs at John Muir Medical Center from 7:15 to 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday, January 10.  Call Leslie Davis at 925-685-8775 for more information.

Interested in statistics?  Over the past ten years, the East Bay Headache Support Group has held 86 consecutive meetings.  We met monthly from January 1996 through December 1999, and bimonthly ever since, with an average attendance of 29.  Dr. Michael Stein, co-founder and medical advisor for the group, was speaker or discussion facilitator for 22 meetings, and 54 guest speakers have presented information on many different topics, but all related to living with, preventing or treating headaches.  Also, 26 Personal Profiles have been submitted by headache sufferers for publication in our newsletter.

The East Bay Headache Support Group would like to publicly thank all those who have made us a success in our mission to provide information and support for headache sufferers in our community, and beyond.  Click here for a list of names and organizations.

Presentation:  Rx Treatment for Migraines

Our guest speaker, Dr. Lori Reisner, will talk about medicines for migraine and other chronic types of headaches, and particularly emphasize the risk of rebound headache from medications.  She will also provide medication management tips.  Dr. Reisner says it is important to develop a management plan to control the severity and frequency of your headaches.  “A careful balance of healthy lifestyle, controller medicines (preventative) and rescue medicines (abortive) should provide most people with migraine the ability to have optimal quality of life with minimal intrusion of the headache into daily activities.” 

Dr. Reisner’s research interests include tolerance to long-term opioid (medications such as morphine) use—its clinical manifestations and pharmacogenomics; surveillance of adverse events associated with pain medications, particularly nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and cyclo-oxygenase-2 inhibitors; and risk of drug interaction events prior to and after the institution of computerized physician order entry.  She has given numerous lectures at more than 100 local, national, and international medical conferences on topics such as pharmacokinetics and polypharmacy in managing neuropathic pain, clinical advances in opioid therapy, and management of pain in HIV disease.  Dr. Reisner is a peer reviewer for the Clinical Journal of Pain and Annals of Pharmacotherapy; she also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Pharmaceutical Care in Pain and Symptom Control.  She recently served on the Board of Directors and the 2005 Scientific Program Committee of the American Pain Society, and is a member of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, and the International Association for the Study of Pain.

Dr. Reisner received her doctor of pharmacy degree from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.  She completed her residency in clinical and hospital pharmacy and her fellowship in pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics at the University of California, San Francisco.

Future Meetings:

March 14, 2006:  Christine Riley, MD, Hormones and Headaches          

May 9, 2006:  To be determined   

The Value of a Smile

A smile costs nothing, but gives so much. 

It reaches those who receive without making poorer those who give. 

It takes but a moment, but the memory sometimes lasts a lifetime. 

None is so rich or so mighty that he can get along without it, and no one is so poor but that he cannot be made richer by it.

A smile creates happiness in the home, fosters goodwill in business, and is the countersign of friendship. 

It brings rest to the weary, cheer to the discouraged.

A smile is sunshine to the sad, and is nature's best antidote for trouble.

Yet it cannot be bought, begged or borrowed or stolen, for it is of no value to anyone until it is given away.

Some people are too tired to give you a smile.  Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give.

Author Unknown

Researching Headaches on the Internet, written by Carol Bartlett, East Bay Headache Support Group Volunteer

The National Headache Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating headache sufferers and healthcare professionals about headache causes and treatments.

Anyone with Internet access can easily find the National Headache Foundation at http://www.headaches.org/.   

The site includes causes, treatments, fact sheets, support groups, information about clinical trials, screening questionnaires, measurement tools, and related links.  The site is divided into two parts, one for the headache sufferer, the other for the healthcare professionals who diagnose and treat them.  You are asked to register when you first log onto the site, but you have the option of skipping that part.

The FAQ (frequently asked questions) section includes a wide range of questions from the simple (What is a Migraine?), to a discussion of rebound headaches, the use of antidepressants and anticonvulsants to treat migraines, whether or not headaches are hereditary, alternative therapies, and much more.  Each question and answer has a link to more information about the subject.

The “Press Room” includes an archive of articles about headaches released to the press during the past year, in an effort to keep the public informed about the very serious effects of headaches on the individual and the public (headaches are one of the most common reasons for absenteeism).

Whether you’re new to the world of headaches or an old hand, this is a good site to begin  your online search for reliable information about your headaches.

Check out the National Headache Foundation at http://www.headaches.org/

Headache News - Vagus Nerve Stimulation—Does it Work on Migraines?

When patients who have severe epilepsy don't respond to drugs, they can be treated with vagus nerve stimulation.  This treatment involves the implantation of a generator that stimulates the vagus nerve—one of 12 pairs of nerves in the brain—to reduce seizure activity.  Since anticonvulsant drugs and antidepressants have been shown to be effective in migraine treatment, researchers wondered if vagus nerve stimulation would be also.   In a study reported in the February 2005 issue of Cephalalgia, the team implanted a generator in four men and two women with disabling migraine who were not responding to other treatments.  They found that the treatment produced dramatic improvement and enabled the patients to return to work.  Two patients with chronic cluster headaches also showed significant improvement.  One patient developed nausea, but the others tolerated the treatment well.

Found on the Web site of the American Council for Headache Education (ACHE) at www.achenet.org.

The East Bay Headache Support Group is under the auspices of the American Council for Headache Education (ACHE). 

ACHE is a non-profit patient-health professional partnership dedicated to advancing the treatment and management of headache and to raising the public awareness of headache as a valid, biologically based illness. 

We encourage you to join ACHE.  Membership is $20 per year and includes a subscription to their quarterly newsletter Headache and discount on the ACHE book, Migraine: The Complete Guide.

To join, call 1-800-255-ACHE, or log on to their Web site at www.achenet.org, or mail your check to ACHE at 19 Mantua Road, Mt. Royal, NJ 08061.

How to Keep a Headache Diary 

Your doctor can’t diagnose or treat your headaches successfully unless you can provide a detailed description of your headache and its symptoms.  Keeping a headache diary can help you remember the information that’s most critical to your doctor.  A good headache diary should include the following:

The date of your headache (day of month and day of week); and the time of day.   Also, women should note the day of their menstrual cycle

	How long the headache lasted
	Any aura or warning signs (flashing or shimmering lights, blind spots); or numbness (in lips, tongue, fingers, legs, etc.)
	Where you felt the pain (one-sided or two-sided, in front of head or in back, behind the eye, or all around)
	What the pain felt like (throbbing, pulsating, stabbing, pounding, a dull ache, etc.)
	How bad was the pain (on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst)…(or try using a scale of 1 to 3)
	What other symptoms you had (nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light or sound, aggravated by physical activity)
	What you were doing when the headache started
	Was your ability to work or function affected?  Work or leisure time missed due to headache (hours/days)
	Time of last meal before headache (and what foods did you eat?)

 

Editor’s note:  Go to www.colmc.org.uk for a headache diary that you can download to your computer and print.

 

 

International Team of Researchers Find Herbal Extract to be Effective in Preventing Migraine, December 2004

 

Bronx, NY – An herbal extract offers considerable help in preventing migraine headaches, according to an international research team led by Dr. Richard B. Lipton of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.  The extract comes from the petasites hybridus root (also known as butterbur), which has been used for medicinal purposes since ancient times.  The researchers reported their findings in the December 28^th issue of the journal Neurology.

 

“Butterbur is a traditional herbal treatment for migraine prevention,” says Dr. Lipton, who is vice chair and professor of neurology at Einstein.  “Our study shows that butterbur really does reduce the frequency of migraine attacks, so it’s a welcome addition to the therapeutic arsenal we have available to combat migraine.”

 

The study involved 245 migraine patients who—during the prior three months—suffered between two to six migraine attacks per month.  For the four-month study, the patients were randomly assigned to take two capsules daily of the 75 milligram (mg) dose of butterbur extract, the 50 mg dose, or a placebo.  The main outcome measured was the percentage decrease in the frequency of migraine attacks, calculated by comparing migraine attacks during the study with the number of attacks that patients experienced before the study began.

 

“The 75 mg butterbur dose reduced headache frequency by 48 percent—a substantial treatment effect,” said Dr. Lipton.  This compared with a 26 percent reduction among placebo users.  Further, Dr. Lipton notes, the 75 mg dose reduced headache frequency by 50% or more in over two-thirds of the migraine sufferers.

 

The study was conducted at nine primary care or specialty centers in the United States and Germany.  Adverse effects from butterbur were infrequent; those most commonly reported that may have been related to butterbur treatment were gastrointestinal in nature, mainly burping.

 

Raw butterbur root contains toxic chemicals that are filtered out during the manufacturing process – a good reason, says Dr. Lipton, for avoiding “home-brewed” butterbur extract and instead using commercially available products, several of which are sold in the U.S.  He further stressed that manufacturing standards are not uniform for plant extracts and that safety data for Petadolex, the brand used in this study, cannot be assumed for other butterbur products.  Petadolex is made by Weber & Weber GmbH & Co., which supported the research.

 

Note from Better Health International:

 

Please note that Petadolex is only available commercially in 50 mg dosage; however, the suggested use of 3 caps per day is equal to the daily dosage used in the study (two 75 mg caps per day).

 

The suggested dosage for Petadolex is as follows:  Adults take 1 capsule 3 times daily with meals for 4 weeks.  Thereafter, take 1 capsule twice daily for 3 months.  If necessary, increase to 1 capsule 3 times daily.

 

This dosage has been shown to be effective in other studies in reducing migraine frequency and intensity.  By consistently taking Petadolex on a daily basis, maximum benefits can be seen in as few as four weeks.  During these early weeks, the preventative power of Petadolex builds in your system.  The resulting relief is worth the wait.

 

Found on the Web site of Better Health International:  

http://betterhealthinternational.com/lib_ButterburEinstein.asp