Has anyone read "Heal Your Headache" please?

Anyone,

Tried the 1-2-3 Program and got anywhere with it please.

Have had the book months, but because I find reading so hard, not got into it.

Should I put my head through it? Is it worth it??

I didn't follow the diet to a T but I have eliminated some things that were in the diet that I ate/drank on a regular basis. Whether you decide to follow the diet or not - I absolutely agree that the book is worth the read! I recommended it on here a couple weeks ago. It also explains medicines commonly used and common misconceptions.

I found the book at the local library and found it very informative. It put things in terms that were easily understood and gave me something to have my husban read so he knew I wasn't losing my mind with some of the symptoms I am experiencing.

Definitely worth the read!

Thanks very much. It is taking me forever to read it.
I know Teri isn't too keen on some of it, but none of them suit everyone.

I have several books, but this one is a bit repetitious than some.
Why do doctors have to keep restating and paraphrasing everything?
I guess its because otherwise it wouldnt be a book, just an article.

Anyway, I shall persevere, thank you.
Pen

I read the book because my mom's friend's daughter saw him and he put her on the diet and she never had another migraine. I followed it exactly..never cheated...not even ketchup which all but killed me. Went off the painkillers and everything. No help. I only used Phenergen to help with the throwing up which he says is okay. It then says to start back with the antidepressants, blood pressure pills, etc. I couldn't get that far. After four months I was losing my mind and started taking painkillers again. I had done the preventative drugs but not while on the diet but you know how long it takes....take the antidep for 6 weeks to find out if it works, etc. But it worked for this other woman so who knows? I'm now back to painkillers and putting ketchup on hamburgers again.

I just got a book in the mail that I ordered some time ago. I don't know if it is that one. You can tell how excited I am to start it. I am not at home now but will check the title tonight. There is always hope.

Wow Noona, that is too bad. I have barely read anything, but if he is saying stop the pain killers I am out before I start.
I cant do it. I have tried, but I have had my family as upset as me. I wont do that again without some support.

Maybe I wont bother to read it....


P

If you can, it might still be worth a read. I think I have the right book on this.....I've read so many! He is of the rebound headache theory and says in order for the diet to work correctly you have to get off the painkillers and start from scratch. I did that but got no results. Lots and lots of pain, used up all my leave at work, but no results.

Noona wrote:If you can, it might still be worth a read. I think I have the right book on this.....I've read so many! He is of the rebound headache theory and says in order for the diet to work correctly you have to get off the painkillers and start from scratch. I did that but got no results. Lots and lots of pain, used up all my leave at work, but no results.

I will still try to read it Noona, but if he is pushing....all things that are rebound...then I wont get far.
The more time goes by, the more people I speak to on FB etc, the less I am prepared to believe the MOH theory.
I am NOT saying it isnt real, NOR that it isnt a problem for some people, just that I think it is overblown.
Just my personal opinion.

I shall perhaps cherry pick the book, and see how I get on, thanks again.

Pen

You shouldn't write off the book without giving it a read yourself.

I personally think the book is highly worth reading and has helped me more than possibly anything else has. When I follow the diet to the letter I have almost eliminated my headaches. I also find when I follow the diet perfectly but allow myself a cheat meal or treat once or twice a week my body won't manifest into a migraine, but if I ate that same cheat meal 3-4 days in a row I'd have a whopper.

If you don't agree with his viewpoints on pain killers, you don't have to subscribe to them. Doesn't mean other things in the book can't help you. I think the diet is something all migraineurs should try - and stick to - at least once in their lives. It is worth seeing whether it will help you. At first he has you eliminate all possible migraine triggers for 2 months. At first this was very difficult - I had to rearrange my diet completely - but after two weeks I was on a schedule with my new diet and it was really no problem at all. After the two months you pick one trigger food at a time and eat it every day for a week to see what happens with your head.

At first the things you must eliminate seems really daunting, but it turns out I can still eat a bunch of things that are on the list. I am slowly discovering what they are.

Thanks Jayme, that is encouraging. I have never found anything dietary so might be a revelation.
Its just so daunting to read a whole book.
My concentration is so crap, but I will get my husband to read some of it for me.

Do I need to wade through the whole book, are there any especially useful bits I could start with please?

I personally would read the whole thing, but that's just my preference. Have you actually started reading it yet? I found it to be a very quick read. I think I was through the entire thing in less than four hours. If you can't read for 4 hours straight, I'm sure 30 min would get you through it pretty quickly.

I read the books - several times and did the elimination diet, to no avail. In fact my Dr who is a migraine specialist says that food triggers are very overrated and the research does not bore them out as a major trigger for most migraineurs. If you have a food trigger, you probably know it by now.

I actually find his approach very punitive, and although some things may help SOME migraineurs, he uses alot of generalizations and misstatements. For one, he says NSAIDS cannot cause MOH. It sure can in some. He also dismisses that neck problems (herniations, myofascial, fibro issues) can trigger or be involved in causing migraines. I beg to differ - I am proof that they can and do!!

Finally, he is pretty radical in stating that some migraineurs are holding onto their pain for attention or emotional reasons (or something akin to that). THAT infuriated me! Now that I have found something that helps, I don't want more migraines because I need the attention or because I am emotionally attached to them. I feel more free and better than I have in a couple of years thanks to my preventative. Is Buchholz for real?

He is big on preventatives and calls abortives and painkillers "quick fixes" that we should not take more than 1-2 a month.

I do agree with him that if you can tolerate preventatives and they do work for you, its worth a shot. But they don't work for everyone, and abortives and painkillers are necessary for us migraineurs if we are to live our lives at all! I still need them and will take them when needed, even though I am on a preventative.

So, take what he says with a large grain of salt and if something works for you, great! I hope it does. Peace to all,
Jane

If you have a food trigger, you probably know it by now.

I disagree with this statement. I had no idea what my food triggers were until I did the elimination diet, and indeed I had no idea what half the stuff was in the processed crap I was eating until I was forced to sit down and really think about what I put in my body.

I should have qualified that statement by saying that it is always important to know what you are eating. I always read the ingredients on everything I eat and I try to stay with foods that have no more than 5 ingredients in them. I eat mostly whole foods and stay away from processed foods - for health in general I think that is a no brainer.

My statement that if you have a food trigger you'd know it, was a simplification, but was basically what my Dr told me, when I told her about my years of trying, to no avail, elimination diets to find that elusive food trigger that was causing my migraines. It was then when she told me that the research does not bore out food triggers as a major factor in most migraines and that it has been overrated as a way to control migraines.

She is at the forefront of some of the latest migraine research and I trust her. I was pulling my hair out trying to find out what food could be triggering my migraines, and everywhere you go, you read lists of foods that are potential triggers and that you have to eliminate them for weeks or months and slowly add them back one at a time to find out which may be a problem for you. Being a vegetarian, it didn't leave much food left for me to eat, having to avoid dairy, wheat, corn, soy along with the standard well known migraine food trigger list etc...

What my migraine specialist told me is that if a food triggers a migraine for you, if you eat it, you will know within a couple of hours, not days (unlike what Buchholz says) that it is a trigger. That is what I meant by my statement. So, she told me to eat what I want and by keeping a journal, I should be able to tease out if a food can trigger a migraine within a couple of hours. I know of a couple and I stay away from them.

It really helps now just to be aware of the processed junk, to stay away from the likes of msg and to enjoy healthy whole foods...it takes some of the pressure and stress off and I do feel better.

I hope you find the answers and like I always say, if you find something that works, right on!!! Go with it.
I hope only the best for you and the rest of us migraineurs!

Best,
Jane

I should have qualified that statement by saying that it is always important to know what you are eating. I always read the ingredients on everything I eat and I try to stay with foods that have no more than 5 ingredients in them.

Obviously this is true, but even foods with 5 ingredients or less can contain dreaded products. It wasn't until I read Heal Your Headache that I fully absorbed how many different product names MSG goes under, for instance. That it's in my toothpaste, my "health" foods, etc, under many different guises. "Natural flavors" comes to mind. So from that perspective I think HYH is good for opening one's mind to the reality of the food industry. My entire perspective on eating and food has changed directly as a result of that book (not that he preaches it per se, but it was just the impetus that made me reevaluate what I thought was a healthy diet).

One trigger I did identify from following the diet in the book, however, was garbanzo beans. I would have NEVER believed this was a trigger until I saw it listed on paper in front of me, as garbanzo beans are constantly touted as a health food. It breaks my heart, too, because I love hummus and falafel so dearly! Sometimes I eat them and just deal with the headache.

I absolutely agree with you: food triggers will manifest in a migraine within hours at the most, not days. I think that his concept of how long something could potentially trigger you is preposterous.

An interesting data point for me is that when I have a food-trigged migraine it is always preceded by an aura. Like the food triggers the aura itself almost and the migraine follows. When I have a migraine that has not been triggered by food, but by something else (neck tension, smells, etc) I never get the aura. I find that so crazy!!!

I agree with some of your other comments in the book, though: he writes off a lot, including neck problems. Neck problems DEFINITELY trigger mine. I didn't like his assertions that NSAIDs can't cause rebounds, too. And I thought he was a little condescending throughout the book. Still, I think he gives a fabulous visualization to readers about how triggers stack onto each other and once you cross a threshold you have a migraine.

I definitely think it's a book worth reading.

So given 90% of my migraines come in the early hours of the morning while I sleep. Say around 5am.
And I haven't eaten anything from 8pm.....sometimes will have a light something....toast, muffin....10.00pm
That a long time to see if what I ate upset me right? From 7-9 hours.

AND eating seems to have no bearing on migraine coming or not....
i didnt eat last night and got one this morning.
I did on Monday night and got one Tuesday morning.

Also I was advised to eat before bed because of low blood sugar.
Carbohydrate.....of all things...

I'm confused now guys....how does this look for me please?

It's not that I dislike the book entirely. It's what I call a "buffet book" -- take what's good and leave the rest. In the introduction to the book, he clearly states that much of the book is his own hypotheses. Since the book came out, research has proven him wrong on some of it, including most of what he says about MOH/rebound.

An odd little tidbit -- he and I have the same literary agent.

Teri

pen wrote:Thanks very much. It is taking me forever to read it.
I know Teri isn't too keen on some of it, but none of them suit everyone.

I have several books, but this one is a bit repetitious than some.
Why do doctors have to keep restating and paraphrasing everything?
I guess its because otherwise it wouldnt be a book, just an article.

Anyway, I shall persevere, thank you.
Pen

Dr. Buchholz is featured in an article in the June issue of Good Housekeeping magazine entitled, "Why You Still Get Headaches."

Page 45, by the way.

Pen, here's a passage from the article:

"Taking too often, pain meds, even over-the-counter varieties, can be setting you up for nonstop headaches.

In one German study of 7,417 women and men, half of those with chronic migraines had medication overuse headaches.

Other experts estimate that two out of three people who get frequent headaches (tension or migraine) are stuck in this pain-pills-pain cycle."

Ugh, doctors are all over the map with their MOH numbers, aren't they! I remember you quoted Mayo Clinic on the low incidence of MOH.

It is very hard to know what to believe on the subject.

By the way, the article mentioned a gal who received great relief from an acupuncturist in Omaha. Someone posted here at Ronda's a while back, about her acupuncturist in Omaha who was really helping her.

I say go to Omaha, if you want to find a good acupuncturist! Pretty interesting, hearing these two testimonials.

I think finding an effective acupuncturist is one in a thousand (speaking from experience). Omaha must be blessed with a winner.

Cheryl

Hi Pen

You might be interested to know I don't take many pain killers at all because my migraine is mostly silent and I am on a medication break mostly but not completely following the migraine trigger guidelines suggested in the book.

It is unlikely therefore that my symptoms are caused by rebound.

I too am at my worst in the morning waking up with the visual disturbances and feeling sick etc.

I was really surprised too by some of the foods, like beans and bread that could be a trigger and have found that things seem a bit better since watching my intake.

If nothing else the book helped me understand a bit more about ideas of how I should be treated when myself and doctor were completely stuck. It has encouraged me to push a little in the right direction instead of waiting around for someone else to come up with a treatment, now that I am more aware of the groups of meds etc.

Some parts can at the start seem annoying or patronising, but I feel it has generally being of benefit to me. If it wasn't for the book questioning motivation for staying sick for example I wouldn't have questioned it and wouldn't have realised that I have no motivation for staying sick and am actually totally motivated to get back to work. I was depressed and blaming myself before this.I was grateful for this because sometimes questioning myself fully and getting annoyed, proves that there's some life in me yet!

I found it better to dip into bits at first and really think about a small bit at a time, then go for longer read when some of the stuff has already being part digested. It is a potentially useful book, but like them all it has to be viewed in relation to what we already know and like all not to be necessarily used as a difinitive answer. I tend to go back to it to look things up.

Di

Thank you both very much. I am finding all your comments a lot easier to read than the book.
My concentration is so bad.....thats the fibro they tell me...