The Dysfunction of Migraine Headache

The Dysfunction of Migraine Headache

As a disorder reaching nearly every culture, historic and contemporary, headache has been experienced in some form by the majority of the human population. Despite its relative age and prevalence, we have yet to fully ascertain either its cause, its organization, or its cure, and continue to suffer everything from quotidian tension-type headache to cluster or "suicide"-type headache with little substantial relief. So just what is it we know about headache? Broadly, headache is largely understood in terms of its external characteristics, that is, its symptoms and their effects on the sufferer. Headache is described as "a throbbing, pulsating or dull ache, often worsened by movement and varying in intensity [that] can be a disorder unto itself, such as migraine, or a symptom of another disorder ranging from a head injury to a brain tumor" (1). The term headache comprises a wide range of subtypes, the most common and studied of which are tension-type, migraine, and cluster headache (1). Of focused attention in this paper is migraine headache, a disorder now afflicting between 23 and 28 million Americans, about 60% of whom go undiagnosed (1).

Historically, migraine and its symptoms have appeared in popular as well as medical literature for more than 1000 years (1). Arguments addressing the nature of migraine pain have thus been long debated, particularly as to whether it was the result of "a disorder of blood vessels (vascular) or of the brain itself (neural)" (2). As early as 1873, Edward Liveing published a theory of the link between migraine and other neurological disorders, including insomnia, epilepsy, vertigo, and vasovagal faints. He asserted with surprising accuracy what contemp...

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...to Better Migraine Treatment, by CNN on CNN.com.

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http://isi6.webofscience.com/CIW.cgi

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http://isi6.webofscience.com/CIW.cgi