New research could mean relief for more than a billion people.
By Chris Conway Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
I don't get headaches often, fortunately, but I have friends who do — bad ones that immobilize them to the point that all they can do is lie down in a dark room and wait for the pain to subside. They are among more than 1 billion people worldwide who suffer from these debilitating attacks, and yet for all the progress medicine has made in so many areas, little improvement has been made in treating these conditions. |
But that may be changing, as Tom Zeller Jr. reports in his cover story in this week's Sunday Review. Zeller, a former Times reporter who is now editor in chief of the digital science magazine "Undark," is at work on a book about headaches. Not only is he well qualified to wade into the complexities of this subject, he's also got a vested interest. He suffers from excruciating headaches that, he writes, cause "a pain so piercing and sustained that I can only grip something sturdy, rock back and forth, and grunt until it subsides." |
Until now. Maybe. He recently tried a new class of medications and his headaches abated a short time later. But he adds that it is characteristic of his headaches to go into remission, only to reappear. So while he's hopeful, he'll keep looking for answers. |
Still, research seems to be making real progress after decades in which headaches were all but ignored by medical science, in part because migraine headaches surface more often in women, and their pain was often written off as having an emotional or psychological origin. |
So while researchers may be a long way from declaring victory over these afflictions, "the swashbuckling science being done is extraordinary," Zeller says. "It really is a fine time to have a headache." |
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