The Migraine Brain

Your Breakthrough Guide to Fewer Headaches, Better Health

Carolyn Bernstein, Elaine McArdle

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781416580331
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Anesthesiology & Pain Management

A comprehensive book that explains how to cope with migraines by an esteemed neurologist. You know that your migraine isn't just a headache. But you may not know that migraine actually is a neurological disease. Affecting one in five women, one in twenty men, and one in twenty children, it's a debilitating, complex, and chronic condition that manifests in a combination of symptoms that can include excruciating head pain as well as other distinctive physical and emotional effects. Yet it's also a disease that you can get control of, improve, and manage, as Dr. Carolyn Bernstein has discovered in her seventeen years as a Harvard Medical School faculty member and practicing neurologist.Praised for her excellence and compassion, the founder of the Women's Headache Center near Boston, and a migraine sufferer herself, Dr. Bernstein has helped hundreds of her patients get better. Now, with The Migraine Brain, the most comprehensive, up-to-the-minute book on migraines ever written, you will be able to do the same—reduce the frequency and intensity of your migraines, learn how to prevent and curtail them and how to recover from them more quickly, and mitigate migraine's effects on every aspect of your life: in the workplace and at home and during sex and travel. Every migraine is different because everyone who gets a migraine has a distinctive "Migraine Brain" with its own sensitivities and triggers. That's why it's so important for you to develop a personalized wellness plan to radically reduce the number and severity of your migraines.Dr. Bernstein also explains why migraines happen, why they are so often misdiagnosed, and why so few people get the right treatment for them. She reveals the latest research that shows that Migraine Brains share a hypersensitivity to stimuli—the Migraine Brain can actually look different from others on a brain scan—and is more likely to experience a cascade of neurological reactions that give rise to the common clusters of migraine symptoms. This breakthrough medical knowledge makes treatment and recovery possible with new migraine-specific drugs as well as with complementary treatments such as yoga, biofeedback, and an exercise regimen.With the extraordinarily thorough recommendations of The Migraine Brain in your hands, you will be fully equipped with all the latest information you need to understand migraines and to help your family and co-workers understand that migraine isn't just a headache: it's a serious, yet treatable disease.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Colophon
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• NOTE TO READERS
• CONTENTS
• Introduction—“I’d Rather Die Than Get Another Migraine”
• PART ONE
• PART TWO
• PART THREE Your Personal Wellness Plan
• Appendix
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS