Dispatch from Migraine Lane: What Really Causes a Headache?

10/22/2009

"I wanna be, your SLEDGEHAMMER!" my husband is belting out over Peter Gabriel in the kitchen. He's in there doing something useful, like caulking, or—I don't know—gluing the windows shut.

Me?

I'm sprawled on the sofa with a headache, feeling beat-up as the Public Option.

So I shouldn't begrudge him the singing, but…

"Oh let me be your SLEDGEHAMMER. This will be my TES-timony...."

Just what you need after a workday has kicked you in the head. And now, of course, the three-year-olds join in.

T-Rex stands on the arm of the sofa, bellows, "Momeeeee, Yucky-Man's gonna get yooooooo!" He's acting out the "Super Heroes vs. Super Villains" episode of the Backyardigans, which is blasting in the background. I knew we were in for this when he mastered the volume button on the remote.

"T-Rex, INSIDE voice please."

"Red alert. Danger! Red alert. Danger!" he screeches, and launches himself at my head.

"Ouch! T-Rex!"

"SLEDGE!" sings my husband.

"Mommeee, I did a poopoo and a peepee," trills Punk from his potty station in front of the TV. Oh fantastic.
 

I get off the sofa to investigate Punk's output, and wish I'd stayed put. On the biohazard index, this is a level five, Code Red, and at this point, so is my headache. Really, this is a job for the EPA, with all their special equipment and stuff.

"Moommeeee, I can help. Yucky-Man to the rescue!" yells T-Rex. He runs over and slams into the potty, very nearly setting off a toxic explosion.

 "SLEDGE!" from the kitchen.

Well this is fun. What I really want to do is let out a primal scream. But that wouldn't be good role-modeling of the inside-voice thing. Just another night on Migraine Lane.

It's all a hazy blur, but we eventually pack the kids off to bed. I crash on the sofa, arm draped over my forehead, and contemplate my headache.

I've got a chicken-or-egg question: Did my headache already exist—in a low-grade way—and then just get massively accelerated by the kids? Or was I susceptible after a long day at work, and them whomp, the kids brought it on?

As a cyberchondriac, I must, of course, look this up. But not right now. Right now, I. Just. Need. To. Sleep…….

The next morning, the headache is still back there, faintly knocking on the inside of my skull. It's what my parents call a "Lurking"—a hint of headache that should promptly be killed with a handful of Advil. Which I proceed to do.

Unfortunately, the Advil just nudges the Lurking a little further back in my head. It's not going away. So I go online. Time to conquer this thing with information.

To sum it up, there are three major headache types:

Tension—More often isolated than chronic, they cause mild to moderate, dispersed pain. The head feels like it's in a vise.

Cluster—Aptly named, they usually stab, like a hot poker, at one side of the face. The eye is often involved, and attacks tend to recur.

Migraine—Severe and chronic, they often herald their arrival with auras, which are flashes of light, blind spots, or limb tingling. Sufferers are sensitive to noise and light.

As far as I can tell, I don't get any one of these. I get a combination of the first and third. Tension headaches but with the noise and light sensitivity. Migraines but without the auras.

And it turns out that my medication of choice, Advil (a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, or NSAID), is recommended for migraines but not tension headaches. In fact, NSAIDs can actually cause tension headaches if overused. ?!

Where the heck does this leave me? I should take Advil but I shouldn't take Advil.
 

Seems to me that my only option here is to stop the headache before it starts. So back to the chicken-or-egg question of cause—click here for a Discovery Health video on the range of triggers.
 

For tension headaches, the origin is largely fatigue, stress and the chemical changes it sets off in the brain. For migraines, the list is longer: stress and fatigue, too, but also hormones (estrogen fluctuations with menstrual cycles, in particular), certain foods or drinks, certain smells or…..(drumroll please) NOISE.

So the answer to the question of headache causation is the chicken and the egg. Stress, hormones, foods—and yes, my boys' noise—can plant the seed of a headache, and they can also make it worse.

But some other key triggers are missing from the list. I'm thinking of petitioning the American Headache Society to add them. These include small boys hurling themselves at your head. Blaring children's programs. Potty incidents that go from bad to worse. Offers of "help" from three-year-olds.

Oh, and the song "Sledgehammer."

Hyper Kid? Stop Blaming Sugar

07/23/2009

It almost seems like a convenient excuse doesn’t it? There’s a reason Junior is streaking, bottomless, up and down the hall like Roadrunner, the dog barking and barreling after him. A reason he’s screeching and hurling matchbox cars at the ceiling. A reason he’s jumping up and down on the sofa with the potty lid on his head, roaring “I am THE POTTY MONSTER!”

The reason? One word: Sugar! And not any sugar that I, his parent, gave him. No, it’s those gummy bears the evildoers at daycare gave him. No, this doesn’t have anything to do with me as a parent, especially not my genes or parenting skills. It’s absolutely all about the sugar—just makes my kids nutso.

Case in point: The other day we walk our three-year-old twin boys to the local store for some juice. The storeowner sees them come in, and with a giant (and, in retrospect, slightly devilish) grin, he pulls out two Tootsie Roll pops. My husband and I exchange glances, but, oh well, I mean you can’t be mean. This guy is theoretically being nice, and the kids are super excited.

“Lollipop, lollipop, lollipop!” they chant, like it’s the key to their happiness—like some sort of “Ommmm” for kids. But we haven’t seen anything yet.

One the way home, they stick the lollipops in their hair and drop them multiple times during various spasmodic wanderings (including one in which Punk pees against a neighbor’s tree, another story entirely)—but both, of course, refuse to part with their candy. At home, one lollipop ends up stuck on T-Rex’s heel; the other we find wedged into a groove on the back of Punk’s potty. ? !

What the…?

“Sugar.” That’s my husband’s—characteristically brief—comment.

If only. Then we’d all have an easy explanation for behavior that is, by adult standards, beyond wacky and otherwise completely inexplicable (and did I mention, not exactly enhancing of adult sanity?) .

But no, sorry folks, we can’t blame sugar, according to the scientists. Study after study—more than 20, in fact—finds that sugar absolutely does NOT make kids hyper, yet the myth that it does persists because it makes us all feel better. Even research on children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder has found that those on a sugar-free diet are pretty much as hyper as those on a sugary diet.

So it’s time to break through the denial by examining what’s feeding the sugar myth:

 

• Parents look for evidence that reinforces their beliefs. In one study, cited by Cornell University nutrition professor Barbara Strupp, two groups of children drank Nutrasweet-spiked drinks; the mothers of one group were told the truth and the mothers of the other group were told the drinks were sugar-sweetened. It turned out the mothers who thought their kids drank sugar drinks rated their kids as much more hyper than the other mothers did.

• Parents blame sugar instead of circumstances. Parents who typically keep their kids away from sugar tend to let them have it on special occasions, like birthday parties. Then when their kids get hyper, they pin it on sugar, instead of pin the tail on the donkey.

Now, I am by no means suggesting that sugar is good for kids. Nutritionally, refined sugar is just empty calories, and what’s most dangerous about it is that, if kids fill up on it, they’re not going to gobble up foods like meats, cheeses, fruits, and vegetables, which are packed with real nutrition (for a fuller picture on good nutrition for kids, see this Discovery Health guide). Then there’s the whole tooth-rotting aspect of refined sugar, which we all know about.

So feeding kids a candy diet is no good, but denying them candy outright isn’t good, either. That just means they’ll be hoarding the stuff in their bedrooms by the time they’re teenagers, filling up on it, and then refusing to eat the family meal.

Then, as adults, they could end up as one of those people with the constantly emptied and refilled candy dish on their office desk. You know the kind I mean. You can be pretty sure it’s not other people who are eating most of their M&Ms. (My theory is it’s all because they weren’t given M&Ms as a reward during potty training.)

But I digress.  I know the question you’re asking: If sugar isn’t making my kid crazy-hyper, what is? This is the same question that’s driving droves of parents to seek Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder diagnoses for their kids, which, as a result, has scores of the nation’s kids hopped up on the drug, Ritalin. But the answer to why kids are hyper is that, well, they are kids. And if they happen to be boys, as my two three-year-olds are, you’re looking at doubling the hyper quotient.

So what do you do? As far as I can tell, it’s the same as with dogs: You pretty much just have to run it out of them. Really, all kids should live on farms. Especially boys.