LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

Headaches

Muscle Spasm Drug Shows Promise as Headache Treatment – (07-02-01)

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Muscle Spasm Drug Shows Promise as Headache Treatment

A few comments here. First, this just lends even more credibility to the use of trigger point therapy and manipulation for the treatment of headaches–the musculoskeletal system is usually heavily involved. On the other side, this article once again points to the one cause, one cure philosophy. If a patient comes into my office with chronic headaches, I can almost always guarantee that they have several types of headaches. I treat with trigger point therapy, stretching, manipulation as well as attention to controlling cortisol levels, addressing food allergies and addressing GI functional problems. Headache patients are a unique and wonderful challenge because I feel that we can almost always get 100% resolution if the patient is dedicated enough to the recommendations. Of course, you could use this pharmacological approach and suffer elevated liver enzymes–but don’t worry–they come back to normal after cessation of drug use.

World Congress of Neurology Tizanidine, a drug used to treat muscle spasms, may provide new hope for millions of people with frequent headaches, physicians said on Wednesday. American scientists told the World Congress of Neurology that tizanidine, marketed by the Irish pharmaceutical group Elan Corp Plc under the brand name Zanaflex, can cut the frequency, duration and intensity of headaches. In a study presented at the 5-day meeting in London, physicians from the Michigan Head Pain and Neurological Institute in Ann Arbor found that tizanidine reduced severe headaches by 55%. Dr. Alvin Lake and colleagues studied 92 patients with frequent headaches. Half of the subjects were randomized to receive tizanidine and half to receive placebo. After 12 weeks of treatment, the average intensity and duration of headaches improved by 51% in the tizanidine group compared with 34% in the placebo group. Side effects such as insomnia, dry mouth and drowsiness were more common in the treatment group. The researchers also found that liver enzymes were elevated in these patients, but returned to normal after treatment. Liver enzymes should be monitored, the investigators emphasized. “Medical literature focused on chronic daily headache is limited, so most of what we know about treatment strategies is based on anecdotal information,” Dr. Lake said. “This study is important because it gives clinicians scientific evidence regarding a new approach to treating an often difficult-to-treat condition,” he added. “Not only did the treatment with tizanidine reduce the amount of analgesic required by the patient, it seemed to work more efficiently on reducing the frequency of the most severe headaches,” Dr. Lake said.

 

Headache Prophylaxis – (08-06-01)

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Headache Prophylaxis

This article was a compilation of Medline abstracts put together by Mescape Neurology with a link to 18 articles with abstracts. 2 of these dealt with natural substances. One with glucosamine (not a well known use for this substance) and one with fever few (well known and effective for headaches). A third article reviewed treatment for pediatric migraine and noted that there are no trials currently available supporting pharmacologic management of pediatric migraine. Mysteriously lacking was any manipulative therapies or lifestyle management. A headache patient in my office, so long as they’re ready to make any recommended changes, can almost always find relief. The bias against natural therapeutics is still way too prevalent.

Enzyme Might Relieve Research Headache – (09-26-02)

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Enzyme Might Relieve Research Headache

Just thought I’d throw this tidbit in for entertainment’s sake…and for those of you that think that mainstream medicine has a handle on things and fully understands the whys and hows of interventions that it uses regularly. Here we see that we may finally understand how Tylenol works (huh?? Tylenol?? That stuff that 90% of the population takes like candy???) and it identifies a new variant of an enzyme we have all become familiar with since widely publicized release of Vioxx and Celebrex–cyclooxygenase (COX).

Science — Wickelgren 297 (5589): 1976a

Read entire article here

Cardiovascular Risk Assessment and Triptans – (06-10-04)

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Cardiovascular Risk Assessment and Triptans

I was not aware that there was concern with triptan use (in this case when used for the treatment of headaches–in my opinion, not a very good use) in patients with cardiovascular disease. Live and learn. However, what makes this VERY interesting is the following article….

Cardiovascular Risk Assessment and Triptans – Headache, Vol 44, Issue s1, pp. S31-S39 (Abstract)

Read entire article here

HEADACHE IN YOUNG DUE TO PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL REASONS – (01-10-02)

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Physical and psychological correlates of headache in young adults

Sometimes I am amazed at just how prevalent headaches are in today’s society, both in research studies and in my own practice. Not that it’s any great surprise, but this study finds that neck and back injuries before age 12 were linked to tension HA in young adults. I would like to change this to improperly treated neck and back injuries. HA originated from the neck muscles is an incredibly common cause of HA, and yet I cannot tell you how many patients come into my office that have had HA for literally decades, and NO ONE HAS EVER TOUCHED THEIR NECK!! It just makes me want to throttle someone that a significanct portion of this patient’s HA could have been eliminated decades earlier if someone had just addressed the cervical spine and musculature.

JNNP — Abstracts: Waldie and Poulton 72 (1): 86.

Read entire article here

Headaches in Teenagers: Simple Tool Blocked by Meds

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Last Update December 18, 2014

migraine in children
philippe Devanne/Dollar Photo Club

Headaches are bad enough, but when they occur in children it can be heartwrenching. The good news is headaches in teenagers and kids can be managed very well.

First things first.  It should NEVER be acceptable for a child to have headaches and manage them with medications.  Period.  It’s bad enough to accept headaches in adults when have had a lifetime of abuse on their bodies and brains.  But when they happen in a child something is wrong and whatever it is needs to be identified and eliminated.

Merely medicating the problem is a very bad idea. Using chronic medication to prevent headaches in children should be heavily frowned upon.

The causes are many and varied.  They can include:

  • Structural problems related to carrying a heavy backpack or sports.  Get to a chiropractor.
  • Vision problems.  Get to an optician.
  • Stress / family issues.  Resolve them for your child’s sake.  Get to a therapist.
  • Anemia
  • Poor quality diet
  • Artificial sweeteners
  • Allergies

The list can get quite long, but if you’ve got the time, read through past posts related to migraines here.

This particular article focuses on a powerful tool that can help greatly with headaches in teenagers as well as headaches in children.

Biofeedback.  Biofeedback, in general, is a process by which a device is used help the user gain greater control over some type of biological function such as blood pressure, breathing or skin temperature.  The Resperate is a biofeedback device for breathing that is FDA approved to lower blood pressure that we use with very good results in our office.

Researchers looked at biofeedback in pediatric headaches to see if biofeedback was effective and, if so, what factors influenced its effectiveness.  Findings are summarized as follows:

  1. Headache frequency dropped from 3.5 to 2 headache days (keep in mind that Topamax was 1/3 less effective than this!)
  2. The response rate was 58% overall; 48% for chronic headaches and 73% for episodic headaches
  3. The ability to raise hand temperature by >3 degrees and use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) were associated with a positive response
  4. Preventive medication (think Elavil, Tegretol, Depakote, Inderal) use actually kept the biofeedback from working

(Personally, I don’t like the finding that SSRIs were associated with a positive response, but it is what it is…)

So, if your child is experiencing headaches, biofeedback is just yet another tool that can help to calm the brain and settle activity down.  There are even multiple apps available on the Droid and iPhone that you can download and have on hand as an immediate tool.

If your child has or is experiencing headaches, we prophylactic medications recommended before lifestyle changes?

MAGNESIUM AND TENSION TYPE HEADACHE – (10-31-05)

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Magnesium and Tension Type Headache

While this was a very small study, the results were pretty amazing. 76% of this small group experienced symptom reduction with magnesium alone. Of interesting note is the form and dose of magnesium used–2.25 g of magnesium pidolate.

I was unfamiliar with this form until I saw it in this article, and some research does suggest that it might be better utilized by the body. What I cannot explain is how such an incredibly high dose (most people taking more than 500 mg will experience loose stools, and this was done in kids with 4.5 times that dose) was tolerated in these kids. Is it that this form of magnesium is absorbed better? Stay tuned..

Read entire article here

MELATONIN’S EFFECTS ON DEPRESSION AND THE BRAIN

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For those who are unaware, melatonin is a hormone produced deep in the brain (the pineal gland) and helps to regulate our sleep / wake cycle, among other things.  Sunlight hitting the back of the retina shuts down the production of melatonin, while the onset of nighttime will allow the body to release more melatonin.  So what does this have to do with depression?

We’ve all heard of serotonin and the drugs like Prosac and Paxil and Zoloft that affect serotonin use in the brain.  These are generally used to treat depression, but, in a close review of the studies that have been done, their effectiveness over placebo was minuscule.  Of course, in these same studies, the placebo had a powerful effect on the patient’s depression, meaning that anyone responding to these drugs is probably benefiting from a placebo response and not the drug itself.

Melatonin and serotonin are players along the same pathway; thus, what effects one pathway will influence both hormones.  It is for this reason that there is rising interest in drugs that modify melatonin levels to affect depression.  The drug companies know that these current financial blockbuster drugs, if the curtain is ever pulled back, could fall like a house of cards.  So they are looking elsewhere.

The biochemistry is pretty straightforward; there is only a single step between serotonin and melatonin production in the pineal gland.  The pathway starts with the amino acid tryptophan (or 5-HTP, which is the next compound produced and can be very effective for depression or anxiety).  As would be expected, serotonin levels are higher during the day, but production shifts to melatonin as night falls.

So what does this mean?  It ties in stress, sleep hygiene, anxiety and depression into a biochemical pathway.  Stress levels will lead to a rise in cortisol levels later in the day, making it hard to fall asleep.  Problems sleeping may lead the sufferer to be exposed to bright lights when the body really should be producing more melatonin.  Less melatonin production will interfere with the smooth flow through the biosynthetic pathway, leading to depression.

In addition, melatonin levels have been linked to things like migraines, seizures and cancer.  Rest assured that these conditions will be impacted as well.

The bottom line is that stress management and proper sleep are an integral component of any healthy lifestyle.  Sleep medications do nothing to fix the elevated cortisol, and will likely disrupt the synthesis of melatonin, further throwing off the cycle.  Stress needs to be managed with any number of tools available so that sleep patterns can be restored.

Read more…