According to the article, Heavy kids’ headaches improve with weight loss, "heavy children who lost weight while undergoing headache treatment showed a much greater reduction in headache frequency than their peers whose weight remained stable or increased."

The study involved over 900 children who ranged in age from 3 to 18 years and the researchers noticed that the heavier children also complained of more severe headaches than their leaner counterparts.

Interesting finding, don’t you think?

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Tags: pain, headaches, children and headaches

Post from: Blisstree

Heavy kids have worse headaches?

Researchers at Rush University did a small study of 65 women, 32 who had tension-type headaches and 33 who didn’t. The majority of women in the headache group (over 80%) said they found sleeping off a headache was an effective management tool. However, almost 60% of the women with headaches also reported having regular sleep problems of either having difficulty getting to sleep or staying asleep. In the group of women who didn’t have these headaches, only 18% had problems sleeping.

Since poor sleep has been linked in the past with an increase in headaches, the researchers are confirming the cycle of lack of sleep leads to headaches that leads to more lack of sleep in many cases.

You can read more about the study in Study Finds Behavorial Link Between Insomnia and Tension-Type Headaches.

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Tags: pain blog, tension headaches, poor sleep, insomnia, tension type headaches

Post from: Blisstree

Don’t let tension headaches lead to insomnia

In a presentation at the American Academy of Neurology Meeting, a conference where neurologists present study findings and discuss them with their peers, researchers said that young adults (from 20 to 55 years old) who had larger waist sizes had more migraines than their skinnier peers.

I don’t know how to take that. I have had migraines since I was a young teen. And it’s only been since I’ve been in my 40s that my waistline isn’t quite as slim as I’d like – and my migraines are actually getting better, although they haven’t gone away altogether.

According to this article, AAN: Migraines Linked to Size of Waistline, the presenter, B. Lee Peterlin, D.O. who did the study with Andrea L. Rosso, M.P.H., suggests, "losing weight in the stomach area may be beneficial for younger people who experience migraine, especially for women."

Interestingly, if you’re over 65 years, the extra abdominal size doesn’t seem to have any more effect on migraines and the fat also doesn’t seem to affect men any differently at all.

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Image: iStock.com

Tags: pain blog, migraines

Post from: Blisstree

Have migraines? You may want to keep an eye on your waistline

Pop on over to read posts on getting through the pain as presented by several people who are far too familiar with pain and symptoms of Migraines.

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Tags: pain blog, headaches, migraines

Post from: Blisstree

This month’s Headache and Migraine blog carnival

A study done in Norway and published in the most recent issue of the journal Cephalalgia, looked at almost 70,000 people. The researchers found that those didn’t exercise had a much higher rate of headaches than those who did. How high? Fourteen percent higher.

You can read more about this study and another similar one in this article, Physical inactivity tied to headache risk. 

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Tags: chronic pain blog, pain blog, headaches

Post from: Blisstree

Have headaches? How active are you?

Their study, which involved almost 4000 patients with several different types of headaches (migraines, chronic headaches, tension headaches, and more), showed at 62% of those who underwent acupuncture experienced pain relief after five or six visits but only 45% of those who took medications did.

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Tags: chronic headaches, migraines, tension headaches, chronic pain blog, pain blog, pain, pain relief, acupuncture

Post from: Blisstree

Chronic headaches and acupuncture

According to Dr. Christopher Li of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, women who have a history of migraines may also have a lower risk of developing breast cancer. Dr. Li’s findings will appear in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention. While researchers don’t quite understand why this may be, their theory is that it has to do with estrogen levels.

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Image: iStock

Tags: chronic pain blog, pain blog, breast cancer, migraines

Post from: Blisstree

Could there be a *good* side to having migraines?

For about 2 weeks now. I’ve had a lingering, not quite painful migraine-like headache behind my left eye. That’s where my migraines occur; they feel like there’s a knife twisting in the back of my eyeball. Every so often, I’ll take an ibuprofen or acetaminophen to see if it will help and, oddly enough, about half the time, the "headache" will go away. The rest of the time, it doesn’t.

I did think that it could be a sinus infection, but no other symptoms point to that. So, what does one do for a migraine that’s not quite a migraine? One that’s been going on for 2 weeks now?

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Tags: chronic pain blog, pain blog, headaches, migraines, sinus infection

Post from: Blisstree

The migraine that’s not quite there, but won’t quite go away either

It started a couple of weeks ago when Janet Jackson had to cancel – at the last minute – a much anticipated concert here in Montreal. After being released from the Royal Victoria Hospital, statements were issued that Janet would resume her tour. Unfortunately, for her fans, this wasn’t the case as her mystery illness continued.

A release issued by her publicists now says that Janet has vestibular migraines, also called migraine-associated vertigo (dizziness). Vestibular migraines can be as painful and debilitating as so-called regular migraines, but they have the added discomfort of dizziness. People who have vestibular migraines usually have visual auras – flickers or flashes of lights or spots in front of the eyes – along with the dizziness that can start up to 15 minutes or so before the pain and other symptoms begin.

While it’s bad enough to have a migraine with the pain, nausea, increased sensitivity to different stimuli, when you throw dizziness into the mix, this can make life unbearable. While people with migraines may just want to curl up in a ball in the dark in bed, if they’re dizzy, that comfort isn’t even available to them.

Having suffered from migraines since I was a teen-ager, I feel badly for Janet. The pain is bad enough – I can’t imagine having vertigo on top of it.

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Tags: chronic pain blog, pain blog, janet jackson, janet jackson migraines, migraine, vestibular migraine, vertigo, photo janet jackson

Post from: Blisstree

Janet Jackson’s mystery illness is vestibular migraine, publicist says

We try to do a theme day every month here at the Health & Wellness channel of b5media. This month, Karen at Pink Ribbon Review is the host. You can check out the other blogs that are participating in her round-up post: Theme Day: Harvest-related Posts on the Health & Wellness Channel

Not every theme is applicable to every blog, so as much as I thought about it, I couldn’t come up with anything for Help My Hurt or Womb Within. So, I figured I’d harvest some of the best posts of the “season.”

These were the top 5 posts here (most read) at Help My Hurt, one per month, since May:

1- May: Press release: Lupus Foundation of America Launches Website Message Boards to Connect People With Lupus

2- June: Helmetless motorcycle riders = organ donors?

3- July: You’ve likely seen this headline: Fentanyl Killing People!!

4- August: Flyers All-Star defenseman Kimmo Timonen knocked out of playoffs by blood clot

5- September: Colors on your website may be a migraine trigger

That’s quite a variety of posts. If you haven’t read them yet, why not take a look and let me know what you think.

And, for my fellow Canadians who celebrated Thanksgiving this past weekend, I hope it was a good one.

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Tags: chronic pain blog, pain blog, lupus, helmetless motorcycle riders, organ donors, fentanyl, kimmo timonen, blood clot, migraine, migraine trigger

Post from: Blisstree

Harvest: Theme day at the Health & Wellness channel