Antidepressants Blog

It is, of course, also wrong to put up with varicose veins without doing anything about them. For one thing, with advancing age the condition will deteriorate and the prospects of curing it become slimmer. In very serious cases it may be impossible to avoid surgery. Such serious cases are rare among Africans, except their older women. Where a medicine man is still practising, he will cut the affected vein with a sharp piece of broken glass and then squeeze out the stagnated blood. This method, which perforce is less hygienic than an operation in a hospital, is all that is needed as far as surgical intervention is concerned. Although we in the West may not submit ourselves to this kind of treatment, nevertheless, in grave cases an operation is better and less likely to be followed by serious complications than treatment by sclerosing. It is a fact that the injected saline solution reaches not only the demarcated vessel but also adjoining ones. As a rule, no one talks about the adverse consequences of sclerosing.

Perhaps 10 per cent of all cases of varicose veins justify surgery. The other 90 per cent of venous disorders in the legs can be treated successfully, or at least with partial success, by other means, such as those outlined below.

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A study at Chicago’s Diamond Headache Clinic in 1983 reportedly showed that biofeedback helped 70 percent of headache sufferers after other treatments had failed. And a sampling of reports from a variety of headache and pain clinics reveals that after biofeedback training, patients with common migraine have averaged a 75-80 percent reduction in pain, while those with classic migraine achieved a reduction of 85-90 percent. Children as young as eight have been successfully taught to use biofeedback.

Biofeedback works by using your imagination to warm your hands. Tests have revealed that during migraine attacks, hand temperature drops by several degrees. As soon as the attack ends, hand temperature rises again. The temperature drop results from diminished blood supply due to artery constriction. In turn, the constriction is due to a stress mechanism, one of a series involved in the migraine sequence. If hand temperature can be prevented from dropping, the migraine process is unable to continue.

For decades, doctors have regarded hand temperature as an involuntary function over which we have no personal control. But in the 1960s, while studying the benefits of yoga, researchers discovered that we could indeed raise our hand temperature by simply imagining that our hands were heavy and warm.

By making mental pictures, and by giving ourselves silent verbal suggestions, researchers learned that almost anyone can gain voluntary control over hand temperature. That’s because the unconscious mind regards all incoming visual and verbal messages as orders to be carried out. A mental picture and a thought are identical, which explains why we must be so careful to think only positive thoughts, and to speak to ourselves only in a positive way. The unconscious makes sure that we get exactly what we “see” and what we “say.”

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Whether to abort an existing headache or to prevent future headaches, brisk rhythmic exercise is one of the most successful natural headache therapies. It is equally effective for tension, migraine or cluster headache and it also defuses stress, anxiety and depression.

At least ten studies have demonstrated that half an hour of brisk daily exercise such as walking stimulates the anterior-pituitary gland to secrete beta-endorphin, one of the natural opiates discussed in Chapter 3 that prevents headache pain from being experienced. The studies also found that exercise raises self-esteem, lessens anxiety, relieves depression, improves oxygen uptake and cerebral functioning, .and creates an upbeat mood that lasts for 24 hours.

Several of the studies showed that a brisk half-hour walk also suppresses a number of migraine trigger mechanisms. For example, a small study of nine sedentary migraineurs at the University of Wisconsin found that after 15 weeks of walking and running, the group’s frequency of headaches had fallen by 50 percent. And if a migraine did occur, its severity was greatly diminished.

Some researchers have concluded that a migraine headache can never reach full intensity in a person who exercises daily. Furthermore, exercise can be used to abort a migraine provided it is begun at the first hint of an approaching headache. Although exercise is a powerful vasodilator, it apparently prevents blood vessels from reaching the excessive stage of dilation which causes migraine and tension headache pain.

To abort either a migraine or tension headache, resist any temptation to lie down. Instead, begin to walk briskly out of doors. If this is not possible, pedal a stationary bicycle (near an open window in mild weather), or swim, or walk briskly up and down stairs. Very often within 20 minutes the headache will have partially or fully disappeared.

Although brisk walking is probably best, any rhythmic exercise will bring additional endorphins flooding into the brain to clear your head. For some people, brisk walking is the only therapy that will completely eliminate a stubborn headache.

You may feel a little groggy after walking off a severe migraine attack. But as a rule, 20 minutes of brisk walking is enough to make the headache itself disappear completely.

To increase the effectiveness of walking therapy, swing the arms vigorously up to shoulder height. This gives a gentle massage to stiff neck and shoulder muscles and relaxes the entire neck area as you walk.

A brisk daily walk of half an hour or longer is an excellent prophylactic for all headache types—muscle-contraction, migraine or cluster.

The exercise you choose must be brisk and it must provide an unbroken pattern of rhythmic movement. Walking is ideal because it needs no equipment, is unlikely to cause injury, and requires no prior warm-up or stretching. By contrast, stop-and-go exercises like baseball, doubles tennis, bowling or golf create so little extra oxygen uptake that they cannot be seriously considered for either shorter long-term exercise therapy.

Obviously, if you are not sufficiently fit or in shape to be able to walk briskly for at least half an hour, you should not suddenly begin to walk as a headache therapy. If you are over 35, overweight, smoke or drink alcohol, are unfit or sedentary, or have any disorder or dysfunction that may be worsened by exercise, you should see your doctor before undertaking any form of exercise therapy.

On the other hand, if you enjoy brisk walking or other forms of aerobic exercise, you don’t have to stop after half an hour. Long walks of one to two hours or more can be even more beneficial.

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Not every migraine attack is triggered by a food. We should never forget that food triggers migraine 1) only when a person is already under emotional stress, and 2) when the stabilizing effect of normal adrenal hormone output is at a low point in its daily cycle. What this means is mat without our being aware of it. Stages 1 and 2 in the headache process could have already occurred.

But studies have shown that at least 25 to 30 per cent of migraineurs can benefit from diet and nutritional therapy, while the elimination of trigger foods could probably prevent migraine attacks in as many more. Only a few may actually be triggering your headaches.

Assuming you are suffering from fairly frequent chronic migraines, you should be able to identify your personal trigger foods by using an elimination diet. This involves a simple three-step process.

* Step 1. Begin an anti-migraine diet, eating only foods unlikely to trigger a headache. If after ten days, your migraines have ceased, this is a good indication that your headaches may be due to one or more trigger foods.

* Step 2. Make a list of those foods or beverages you crave the most and which you suspect could be precipitating your headaches.

* Step 3. Every two days, reintroduce a single suspect food into your diet. During a 48-hour period, eat several helpings, especially in the evening. If you get a headache, eliminate mat food and return to your antimigraine diet for another 4 days. Then introduce the next suspect food. And so on.

At this point, you are cautioned not to begin an elimination diet without your doctor’s specific approval. However, provided you do not test more than four foods at one time (over a total of eight days of testing), there is little risk for a healthy person. If at any time while on the elimination diet or while testing foods, you experience any unusual symptoms, pain, digestive disorder or pronounced discomfort, stop the diet and return to your normal eating patterns immediately.

OB the other hand, you don’t need to give in too easily. Don’t give up just because you crave a certain forbidden food, or because it’s difficult to adjust to new eating patterns, or because of pressure from relatives or friends.

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Our negative thoughts are translated into physiological states that can produce an ulcer, a heart attack, a stroke, an infection, cancer or a headache. In fact, medical science now recognizes that virtually every disease or dysfunction has a stress component. Which disorder we actually get depends on our genetic makeup. If our coronary arteries are prone to spasm, a stress mechanism can set off unstable angina and a heart attack. If we are prone to headaches, we may get a tension, a migraine, or a cluster headache. The type we get will be the one to which our body chemistry makes us most prone.

Drugs or medical treatment can be of little help at this level. This emphasizes once again that most drugs merely serve to palliate symptoms while the root cause of disease may be eliminated by drugless behavioral medicine.

The most effective single step that most chronic headache sufferers can take is to let go of all beliefs that cause or intensify headaches and to replace them with new beliefs that minimize headaches and that engender high-level wellness.

One can only guess at how many millions of migraine headaches are suffered annually by people who continue to believe “I will never forgive so-and-so because of what he or she did to me.” Such a destructive belief is a “hair trigger” which can set off a headache on the slightest provocation.

Meanwhile, we estimate, every year at least several thousand migraineurs achieve immediate and permanent liberation from their headaches when they learn to forgive everyone whom they believe may have harmed them.

Through behavioral medicine, we can eliminate most stress, and thereby end most headaches, by changing the way we perceive events, so mat instead of seeing them as threatening, we see them as neutral or friendly.

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If your physician is the type who overmedicalizes everything and attempts to solve all problems with drugs, you may want to seek a second medical opinion. Some physicians will prescribe a drug even when the problem is one for which drugs are not the best answer. When a side effect appears, they tend to view it as a brand new disease to be treated by prescribing yet another drug.

It would be wise to seek a second opinion about any decision to “manage” your headache with drugs on a long-term basis. This is especially important if you are taking a daily “background” drug and add a painkiller during attacks. It is all too possible that, far from being the best treatment for your condition, such drug management has been prescribed as the treatment least likely to provoke a litigation suit.

Side effects from “maintenance” drugs have turned many chronic headache sufferers into passive, helpless zombies. If you suspect you are being kept on a drug that you may not really need, you should seek a second medical opinion. Not all doctors are equally competent. Even within medicine, there is a choice of regimes for treating chronic headache. A second doctor may know of a less costly, less harmful, and more effective treatment of which your own doctor is unaware.

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