Medicine Starting to "Behave" Itself
Details
As I write this blog, I am on an Amtrak train on my home to New York. I have spent the last several days in Washington, D.C. at the American Headache Society Annual meeting. There are many exciting new developments in our understanding of the biology and genetics of headache and migraine, and some new drugs on their way to market and several that show promise in early clinical trials. But what fascinated me the most and seemed to be the best news was the apparent slow shift in neurology toward the acceptance of non-pharmacological therapies for the treatment of headaches. The future looks bright indeed! Several presentations involved the growing use and acceptance of alternative and non-pharmacological treatments by neurologists who treat headache. And couple even reported on the use of mobile apps to track headaches and medications and how they impact/improve care.
This last point is particularly interesting to me as I have been working on a new website and apps that will connect patients with their physicians, and allow patients to use the apps for meditation and other tools, as well as tracking tools that integrate directly with the website. The first of our apps, HealthyUgo's Headache HUG, is now available on the apple i tunes store. For those of you with headaches, we think you will find this app to be a very helpful way to meditate and decrease the frequency and severity of your pain. Finally, I was very pleased and surprised to see all the work and research that has been done regarding the correlation between childhood abuse (of any nature) and chronic pain or headaches as an adult. This is often overlooked by clinicians and even I have struggled with learning how to approach the subject with patients. Incredibly, even the basic biology of how the brain changes as a child due to stress is now better understood and lays the groundwork for adding forms of psychotherapy for some patients with chronic pain and headache. We will be increasing our screening for this at neurOasis and utilizing our on site psychologist much more in the coming months. It's often all about how we behave, and it appears that medicine is starting to get its act together!