Managing Your Migraine

...a gem for millions of migraineurs seeking more effective migraine management...compassionately builds a foundation for migraineurs to understand and participate in effective migraine management...an exceptional addition to the educational needs of the migraine population...-Journal of Family Practice

• 1: Where to Turn/What to Ask for.- A Good Diagnosis: Necessary But Not Sufficient.- The Headache Workup: What to Expect.- After Diagnosis, Then What?.- A Significant Partnership: You and Your Doctor.- Headache Clinics: State-of-the-Art Care.- Other Resources.- Another Resource: Using the Remainder of This Book.- 2: Researchers Tackle A Tough One: Struggling with the Migraine Mystery.- An Ancient Mystery Persists.- Obstacles Yield to Progress.- Current Medical Thinking: Wolff Revisited.- Agreement Grows.- The Future Agenda.- The Big Picture: The Status of the Mystery.- Moving on to the Personal Level.- 3: Improving Our Odds: Triggers and Threshold-Setters.- The Most Obvious Activators: External Triggers.- More Fundamental Causes: Threshold-Setters.- Better Control Through Careful Evaluation.- The Big Picture: Triggers and Threshold-Setters at a Glance.- 4: How Lifestyle Contributes: Live Right and Thrive.- A Matter of Control: Schedule Regularity.- Stress: Trigger and/or Result.- Smoking: An Obvious Culprit.- Special Environmental Influences.- Legal Ramifications of Disabling Illness.- The Big Picture: Lifestyle Factors.- Balance to Be Achieved.- 5: The Impact of Diet: A Commonsense Approach.- The Food-Headache Link: Darkness Abounds.- Dietary Sensitivity: Practitioners and Sufferers Speak.- The Nature of the Dietary Connection: What It Is and Isn’t.- The VAS Total Load Approach.- Migraine and Vegetarianism: An Uneasy Alliance.- The Big Picture: Diet as a Factor in Migraine.- 6: Your Migraine Diet: Understanding and Hanging On.- Examining Migraine Diets and Challenging the Experts.- Can We Talk?.- Specific Information About Dietary Migraine.- Coping Strategies for the Steady Customer.- The Good News: Dietary Changes Bring Improvement.- The Big Picture: Principles ofEffective Dietary Management.- Balance to Be Achieved.- 7: The Risk of Femininity: Turning Lemons Into Lemonade.- Female Majority: Whys and Wherefores.- Knowing Your Lemons: Keep a Diary.- Hormone Adjustments: Basic Threshold-Setters.- Strong Medicine for Stubborn Cases.- Pregnancy: Prepare Mom First, Then the Nursery.- My Search for That Delicate Balance: Trial, Error, and Success.- The Big Picture: Variations on a Lemonade Recipe.- Balance to Be Achieved.- 8: Disorders that Muddy the Water: Mimicry, Masquerade, and Mutual Interaction.- Reasons for Misdiagnosis.- Migraine Accompaniments and Equivalents.- Mistaken for Migraine.- Complicating Disorders.- The Big Picture: Migraine and Other Disorders.- Balance to Be Achieved.- 9: Nonheadache Drugs Cause Trouble: Is Anybody Checking?.- The Thigh Bone’s Connected to … Who Knows What.- An Advocate’s Dilemma.- Pharmaceutical Troublemakers.- The Big Picture: Nonheadache Medications.- Balance to Be Achieved.- 10: Getting Effective Treatment: Benefit Versus Risk.- The Magic Cure.- Guidelines for Choosing a Specific Medication.- Migraine Drugs at a Glance.- Migraine Abortive Agents: A Stitch in Time…May Lead to More Serious Problems Down the Road.- Pain Relievers (Analgesics) and Sedatives: Friends or Enemies?.- The Frustrating Quandary: Should I Reach for That Bottle?.- Reading Your Body’s Signals: Identifying Your Prodrome.- Emergency Treatment: Relief for the Debilitating Attacks.- Preventive Treatments: What Should We Do With the Corpse?.- The Pendulum Swings: Undertreatment.- The Big Picture: Medical Treatments.- Balance to Be Achieved.- 11: Healing the Scars: Getting Better After Your Headaches Do.- Would a Benign Illness Leave Scars?.- Migraine and Depression: The Chicken and the Egg.- Smelling the Roses.-Suggested Readings/References.