Fifteen specialists serve as chapter authors, covering sex hormones and genetics, as well as the social, cultural, psychiatric, and psychological factors that contribute to headache disorders. Their approach is evidence-based, but where there are gaps in research, the authors provide advice based on expert consensus and clinical experience. Each chapter opens with a case report that synthesizes the chapter's treatment recommendations, as well as key points listing the chapter's contents. The main body of the chapter features an introductory overview, a closing summary, tables, and an extensive list of suggestive reading.

Case-based compendium of advice for physicians with some background of headache. Headaches are addressed as case studies, with each chapter written by different authors. Halftone illustrations. Includes selected readings and editorial comments. CD-ROM includes the Seminars in Headache Management and Conquering Headache.

The first textbook that focused on the multidisciplinary treatment of migraine including pharmacological and non-pharmacological approaches. This comprehensive text discusses epidemiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis, and management of patients with migraine headache integrating clinical experience and expertise with current evidence-based best practices. The authors are worldwide experts recognized in migraine and headache with experience in academic, research, and practice settings. This book reviews the options for medical management of patients with migraine by way of: pharmacological interventions; musculoskeletal interventions including muscle and joint.centered interventions, manual therapy, and dry needling; and complementary and alternative medicine techniques including naturopathy, acupuncture, and placebo. With a multimodal and multidisciplinary approach, this comprehensive resource provides a variety of therapeutic tools for students and practitioners to provide excellent care and medical management of patients with migraine headache

The brain is the most complex organ in our body. Indeed, it is perhaps the most complex structure we have ever encountered in nature. Both structurally and functionally, there are many peculiarities that differentiate the brain from all other organs. The brain is our connection to the world around us and by governing nervous system and higher function, any disturbance induces severe neurological and psychiatric disorders that can have a devastating effect on quality of life. Our understanding of the physiology and biochemistry of the brain has improved dramatically in the last two decades. In particular, the critical role of cations, including magnesium, has become evident, even if incompletely understood at a mechanistic level. The exact role and regulation of magnesium, in particular, remains elusive, largely because intracellular levels are so difficult to routinely quantify. Nonetheless, the importance of magnesium to normal central nervous system activity is self-evident given the complicated homeostatic mechanisms that maintain the concentration of this cation within strict limits essential for normal physiology and metabolism. There is also considerable accumulating evidence to suggest alterations to some brain functions in both normal and pathological conditions may be linked to alterations in local magnesium concentration. This book, containing chapters written by some of the foremost experts in the field of magnesium research, brings together the latest in experimental and clinical magnesium research as it relates to the central nervous system. It offers a complete and updated view of magnesiums involvement in central nervous system function and in so doing, brings together two main pillars of contemporary neuroscience research, namely providing an explanation for the molecular mechanisms involved in brain function, and emphasizing the connections between the molecular changes and behavior. It is the untiring efforts of those magnesium researchers who have dedicated their lives to unraveling the mysteries of magnesiums role in biological systems that has inspired the collation of this volume of work.

Arguing that an appropriate medication has the best potential for relieving a headache, a guide to headache treatment discusses different types of pain, and conventional and alternative options for prevention or treatment.

M. WILKINSON Patients with frequent or daily headaches pose a very difficult problem for the physician who has to treat them, particularly as many patients think that there should be a medicine or medicines which give them instant relief. In the search for the compound which would meet this very natural desire, many drugs have been manufactured and the temptation for the physician is either to increase the dose of a drug which seems to be, at any rate, partially effective, or to add one or more drugs to those which the patient is already taking. Although there have been some references to the dangers of overdosage of drugs for migraine in the past, it was not until relatively recently that it was recognized that drugs given for the relief of headache, if taken injudiciously, may themselves cause headache. The first drugs to be implicated in this way were ergotamine and phenazone. In the case of ergotamine tartrate, the dangers of ergotism were well known as this was a disorder which had been known and written about for many years. In the treatment of headache, fully blown ergotism is rare and in recent years has usually been due to self-medication in doses much greater than those prescribed although there are a few recorded cases where toxic amounts have been given.

Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-Activating Polypeptide is the first volume to be written on the neuropeptide PACAP. It covers all domains of PACAP from molecular and cellular aspects to physiological activities and promises for new therapeutic strategies. Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-Activating Polypeptide is the twentieth volume published in the Endocrine Updates book series under the Series Editorship of Shlomo Melmed, MD.