Posts by sarcozona
A reminder of why I sound really bitter about pharma sometimes
Fake acupuncture works about as well as real acupuncture for migraine which works as well as or better than standard migraine treatments. Which is to say, we are utterly shit at treating migraine and at least acupuncture won’t make you gain weight/lose weight/lose the ability to speak/make you suicidal/destroy your digestive system/make you stupid/etc. Also, […]
Weight gain and migraine drugs
Amitrityline and Flunarizine, commonly used for migraine, cause weight gain, likely by inducing leptin resistance.
migraine by Lucky Pinza on Flickr
Duality
For headache specialists, reducing the disorder to a specific mechanism in the brain doesn’t just relieve the symptoms of migraine [referring to development of Imitrex]; it also targets the stigma associated with it by shifting responsibility for the pain away from a weak or neurotic personality toward a body over which the patient has no […]
Practical pain scales
Sick enough to want help; well enough to not need it.
Trying to get better is bad for your health
Another shit thing about the expectation to keep trying to get better: every treatment has risks and you can end up worse than you started.
Why cheap patients are expensive for doctors
providing services to headache patients—no matter how needed they are—is often described as a money-losing proposition. The problem is twofold: headache medicine requires few procedures, while at the same time, necessitates long doctor-patient appointments. This matters because in the United States reimbursement rates pay much higher dividends for procedures than “evaluation and management.” Joanna Kempner […]