Why Hasn't Medical Science Cured Chronic Headaches?
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Same goes for women's health. Surely some typically painful routine procedures are experienced by the very doctors that perform them. Again, how do they reconcile their experience with how they practice?
What do you mean by that?
Patients seeking solutions often experience frustration and desperation. They visit neurologists, anesthesiologists, pain-management specialists, alternative healers, and online chat groups, trying to find explanations and relief.
Given the base-rate, surely some doctors must also experience these maladies themselves. How do they resolve the apparent contradiction of presumably their own frustration and desperation as a patient and while also being in some way the creator of it as a doctor?
Those are typically different people, so there is no contradiction.
How would that person understand the contradiction of sometimes being in a role where they dismiss patients, but also sometimes being in the role of the patient where they are being dismissed?
I've wondered if it comes down to a game theory result where if you have x amount of time to distribute amongst y problems, there's more net social utility in applying a simple solution to everyone, and accepting that difficult problems will be missed. Versus spending detailed time on each problem, and as a result solving fewer problems but better.
Of course, when money comes into play, it seems as though you're going to be financially required to rush everyone through the door in 15 minutes, or else your business will lose to someone who adopts this strategy. Leaving anyone with a complex problem dead.
I spend a lot of time on migraine and pain subreddits and there is an air of deference to the medical authority to know what to do. But if your case is complex, you just can't fit into the simple flow chart, and need to advocate and problem solve for yourself. Which leads people into the path of pseudoscience and exploitation.
I don't get what you or the OP expects them to do about it. There is no secret cure for migraines they are hiding from the rest of us.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-psychiatry/...
for someone, sometimes? sure, probably. even placebos do that.
there are a bajillion of causes of headaches. there is no one solution. that's the problem.
Maybe you actually need to read the article.
If you really want a bad trip, head over to the r/migraine and r/chronicpain subreddits. These subreddits are full of people, with none of the resources or experiences as the author, betrayed entirely by the medical system which does not serve them, and condemned to chronic pain. The complexity and range of headache and migraine causes does not lend itself well to a 15 minute GP appointment every few months, and without the technical expertise these people turn to alternative medicine, online pseudoscience, and opiates.
A couple times a year, it lasts for a day or more. That's when it really sucks. I keep on top of taking mucus relief and allergy pills, which keeps down the sinus headaches... but I'm never quite sure what it is, as it's all just sever pain inside my head. Often coming with nausea, severe pain, dizziness and sometimes panic attacks.
I also have chronic back and hip pain as well. I don't like opiates at all, they tend to come with excessive nausea.
The meninges and periosteum, which I mentioned also have pain receptors which can be involved in headaches, are very much not the same thing as the scalp.
The idea that the brain doesn't have pain receptors implies that headaches are just hallucinated pain is just completely nonsense.
While a cup of coffee often helped me feel better in years past, I've found eliminating coffee from my diet has reduced my headache frequency. Triptans help when I get the occasional headache now.
I was disappointed that the article didn't talk about the variety of migraine manifestations. Some of the manifestations can be confused with transient ischemic attacks.