May 24th, 2009 by eDocAmerica in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Humor
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One of our most revered faculty members, Lee Archer, MD, a neurologist, provided a copy of the handout he gives to his headache patients. With his permission, I adapted it for use with my own patients. I thought it was so good that I asked him if I could publish it on my blog so that others could benefit from his advice.
Headaches are incredibly common and usually frustrating for providers. It has become increasingly evident that chronic or frequently occurring headaches are often virtually impossible to identify as either “migraine” or “tension” headaches and often simply are called “chronic headaches”. Treatment often becomes a revolving door of trying new medications that sometimes work, but more commonly don’t. And, even worse, many headache patients gradually simply become dependent on addictive pain medications just to try to cope with their often daily discomfort.
But, there are some really basic things about dealing with chronic headaches that we should never forget to try. So, without further ado, here is his advice:
Ten Steps to Overcoming Your Headaches
There are some things that everyone can do to help their headaches. There are a number of things you can besides just take medication to help their headaches. If someone follows all of these directions, the need for prescription medication is often dramatically reduced if not eliminated.
1. First and foremost, taking pain medication everyday is definitely not a good idea. Daily pain medication tends to perpetuate headaches. This is true for over-the-counter medications like Excedrin and BC powders, as well as prescription medications like Fiorinal, Midrin, and “triptans” like Imitrex, Zomig, Relpax, Frova, etc. Exactly why this occurs is unclear, but it is a well established clinical finding. Anyone who takes pain medications more than twice a week is in danger of perpetuating their headaches. Occasional usage of pain medications several times in one week is permissible, as long as it is not a regular pattern. For instance, using pain medication several days in a row during the perimenstrual period is certainly permissible.
2. Regular exercise helps reduce headaches. Exercise stimulates the release of endorphins in the brain. These are chemicals that actually suppress pain. I encourage people to aim for at least 20 minutes of aerobic exercise (like walking or swimming) five days a week if not daily. In addition to helping reduce headaches, this also will prolong your life because of the beneficial effects on your heart.
3. Stress reduction is a definite benefit in reducing headache frequency and severity. Headaches are not caused by stress alone, but can make most headaches worse. There are no easy answers for how to reduce stress. If it is severe, we can consider referral to a therapist for help.
4. Too much or too little sleep can trigger headaches. Pay attention to this, and note whether or not you are tending to trigger headaches from sleeping too little or too much. People differ as to how much sleep is “right” for them.
5. Caffeine can precipitate headaches. I encourage patients to try stopping caffeine altogether for a few weeks, and we can decide together whether or not caffeine might be contributing. Abruptly stopping all caffeine can trigger headaches, too, so try to taper off over a week.
6. NutraSweet (aspartame) can cause headaches in some people. If you are drinking multiple servings/day of beverages containing NutraSweet you might consider trying to stop that, and see if your headaches respond.
7. There are some other foods they may trigger headaches in some people. Usually people learn this very quickly. For instance, red wine will precipitate migraines in many people, and chocolate, nuts, hot dogs and Chinese food triggers headaches in certain cases. I generally don’t advise omitting all of these foods, unless you notice a pattern where these foods are causing headaches.
8. If I give you a prophylactic medication for headaches, you should take it daily, as prescribed. If you have trouble tolerating it, please let me know and we can consider using something else. No prophylactic medication works in every patient with headaches. Generally, each of the medications works in only about 60% of people. Therefore, it is not uncommon to need to try more than one medication in any given patient. We must give any of these medications at least four to six weeks to work before giving up on them. It generally takes that long to be sure whether or not a medication is going to work.
9. Keep a calendar of your headaches. Use a standard calendar and mark the days
that you have a headache, how severe it is on a scale of one to ten, what you took
for it and how long it lasted. Also note anything that you think could have
precipitated it. By keeping this over time we can tell if our efforts
are helping.
10. Riboflavin (vitamin B2) 400mg daily helps prevent migraines in many people. It
comes in 100mg size tablets, so you will need to take four of them each day. You
can add it to anything else we try. You do not need a prescription for it.
Do you have chronic headaches? If so, I challenge you to apply these ten principles, then come back and provide a comment on this blog post!
Thanks and good luck!
*This blog post was originally published at eDocAmerica*
May 21st, 2009 by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips
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Patients I’ve seen who succeeded in quitting, sometimes tell me what it was that enabled them to quit this time when they had been unsuccessful many times before. Sometimes it was a change in personal circumstances, sometimes an aspect of the treatment we gave them, but sometimes they tell me there was a single thought, tip or piece of information that stuck in their mind and really helped.
So I thought I’d share a few of those thoughts or tips that helped others, and ask readers to share the things that helped them most. Here are a few:
1. “Move a muscle, change a thought”
This phrase stuck on one patient’s head as a reminder that when he was sitting and bored and starting to crave a smoke, he should get up, and get busy to help shake the thought of a cigarette from his mind.
2. “My cigarettes are radioactive”
The information that cigarette smoke contains radioactive chemicals like polonium-210 really stuck in the mind of one ex-smoker and helped her stay off them.It is estimated that smokers of 1.5 packs of cigarettes a day are exposed to as much radiation as they would receive from 300 chest X-rays a year.
In case you don’t mind polonium, here are some other substances found in cigarette smoke:
Ammonia: Household cleaner
Arsenic: Used as a poison
Benzene: Used in making dyes
Butane: Gas; used in lighter fluid
Cadmium: Used in car batteries
Cyanide: Deadly poison
Lead: Poisonous in high doses
Formaldehyde: Used to preserve dead specimens
3. “Get rid of ALL tobacco and lighters from the house and car”
Many smokers have told me that this was the single most important piece of advice they followed. They said that many times the cravings were so strong that if they had cigarettes in the house they would have smoked them. But having very thoroughly cleared them out of the house gave them some peace of mind and bought them enough time to deal with the cravings when they occurred.
I’d be interested to hear from readers what their most helpful tip or piece of information was when quitting smoking. Feel free to use the comment section to post your favorites.
This post, Tips To Help You Quit Smoking, was originally published on
Healthine.com by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D..
May 20th, 2009 by Harriet Hall, M.D. in Better Health Network
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There is no question that patients on insulin benefit from home monitoring. They need to adjust their insulin dose based on their blood glucose readings to avoid ketoacidosis or insulin shock. But what about patients with non-insulin dependent diabetes, those who are being treated with diet and lifestyle changes or oral medication? Do they benefit from home monitoring? Does it improve their blood glucose levels? Does it make them feel more in control of their disease?
This has been an area of considerable controversy. Various studies have given conflicting results. Those studies have been criticized for various flaws: some were retrospective, non-randomized, not designed to rule out confounding factors, high drop-out rate, subjects already had well-controlled diabetes, etc. A systematic review showed no benefit from monitoring. So a new prospective, randomized, controlled, community based study was designed to help resolve the conflict.
O’Kane et al studied 184 newly diagnosed patients with type 2 diabetes who had never used insulin or had any previous experience with blood glucose monitoring. They were under the age of 70 and recruited from community referrals to hospital outpatient clinics, so they were likely representative of patients commonly seen in practice. They were randomized to monitoring or no monitoring. Patients in the monitoring group were given glucose meters and were instructed in their use and in appropriate responses to high or low readings, such as dietary review or exercise. They were asked to take four fasting and four postprandial readings every week for a year. Patients in the no monitoring group were specifically asked NOT to acquire a glucose monitor or do any kind of self-testing. Otherwise, the two groups were treated alike with diabetes education and an identical treatment algorithm based on HgbA1C levels.
Their findings:
We were unable to identify any significant effect of self monitoring over one year on HbA1c, BMI, use of oral hypoglycaemic drugs, or reported incidence of hypoglycaemia. Furthermore, monitoring was associated with a 6% higher score on the well-being depression subscale.
So home monitoring not only did no good but it made patients feel worse. Why? Perhaps because they were constantly reminded that they had a disease and worried when blood glucose levels rose, especially when the recommended responses of dietary review and exercise didn’t rapidly lead to lower readings.
We would not accept the results of one isolated study without replication, but in this case the new study adds significantly to the weight of previous evidence and arguably tips the balance enough to justify a change in practice.
The American Diabetes Association still says “Experts feel that anyone with diabetes can benefit from checking their blood glucose.” But they only recommend blood glucose checks if you have diabetes and are:
• taking insulin or diabetes pills
• on intensive insulin therapy
• pregnant
• having a hard time controlling your blood glucose levels
• having severe low blood glucose levels or ketones from high blood glucose levels
• having low blood glucose levels without the usual warning signs
Diabetes experts see the severe, complicated cases and have a different perspective from that of the family physician seeing mostly mild and uncomplicated cases. An article in American Family Physician said
Except in patients taking multiple insulin injections, home monitoring of blood glucose levels has questionable utility, especially in relatively well-controlled patients. Its use should be tailored to the needs of the individual patient.
An editorial in the BMJ pointed out that
Home blood glucose monitoring is a big business. The main profit for the manufacturing industry comes from the blood glucose testing strips. Some £90m was spent on testing strips in the United Kingdom in 2001, 40% more than was spent on oral hypoglycaemic agents.2 New types of meters are usually not subject to the same rigorous evaluation of cost effectiveness, compared with existing models, as new pharmaceutical agents are.
If the scientific evidence supporting the role of home blood glucose monitoring in type 2 diabetes was subject to the same critical evaluation that is applied to new pharmaceutical agents, then it would perhaps not have been approved for use by patients.
Conclusion
Home glucose monitoring in type 2 diabetes is not justified by the evidence. It does not improve outcome, it is expensive, and it may decrease the quality of life of patients.
Common sense suggested monitoring should improve outcome. We had assumed it would work. Scientists thought to question that assumption. They found a way to test that assumption. New evidence showed that it was a false assumption. In response to that evidence, the practice is now being abandoned. This is how science is supposed to work. Another small triumph for science-based medicine.
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
May 3rd, 2009 by KevinMD in Better Health Network
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Bolstered by the stimulus, there’s no doubt that there’s a significant push for doctors and hospitals to adopt digital medical records.
I’ve written before how we’re essentially throwing money at Windows 95 technology, but now, as an article from BusinessWeek points out, there’s a real danger in moving too fast.
Somewhat under-publicized were the incompatibilities with older systems in the Geisinger Health System, which after spending $35 million on software, noticed a spike medication errors that required another $2 million to fix.
Or what happened at the University of Pennsylvania, which found medication errors stemming from software designed to prevent mistakes.
Worse, there is no national database tracking the errors that are caused from electronic medical records. Because most of the programs are not open-source, confidentiality agreements meant to protect proprietary technology also serve to hide mistakes.
Ideally, these issues need to be resolved before throwing more money into bad technology. But, because of the intuitive notion that technology automatically improves health care, no one seems to be advocating a more cautious route which may, in actuality, better serve patients.
***
Better Health Editor’s Note: Please read this post for more in-depth coverage of how difficult it is to transfer health records electronically.
