#5ThoughtsFriday
06/07/2018
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JUNE 23, 2018
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Here are the 5 things we thought were
worth sharing with you this week:
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The first medicine designed to prevent migraines was approved by the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday, ushering in what many experts believe will be a new era in treatment for people who suffer the most severe form of these headaches.
The drug, Aimovig, made by Amgen and Novartis, is a monthly injection with a device similar to an insulin pen. The list price will be $6,900 a year, and Amgen said the drug will be available to patients within a week.
Aimovig blocks a protein fragment, CGRP, that instigates and perpetuates migraines. Three other companies — Lilly, Teva and Alder — have similar medicines in the final stages of study or awaiting F.D.A. approval.
“The drugs will have a huge impact,” said Dr. Amaal Starling, a neurologist and migraine specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. “This is really an amazing time for my patient population and for general neurologists treating patients with migraine.”
Millions of people experience severe migraines so often that they are disabled and in despair. These drugs do not prevent all migraine attacks, but can make them less severe and can reduce their frequency by 50 percent or more.
CLICK HERE for this exciting development for migraine sufferers. .
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We tend to trust what goes on in our brains. After all, if you can’t trust your own brain, what can you trust?
Generally, this is a good thing – our brain has been wired to alert us to danger, attract us to potential mates, and find solutions to the problems we encounter every day.
However, there are some occasions when you may want to second guess what your brain is telling you. It’s not that your brain is purposely lying to you, it’s just that it may have developed some faulty or non-helpful connections over time.
It can be surprisingly easy to create faulty connections in the brain. Our brains are predisposed to making connections between thoughts, ideas, actions, and consequences, whether they are truly connected or not.
This tendency to make connections where there is no true relationship is the basis of a common problem when it comes to interpreting research: the assumption that because two variables are correlated, one causes or leads to the other. The refrain “correlation does not equal causation!” is a familiar one to any student of psychology or the social sciences.
It is all too easy to view a coincidence or a complicated relationship and make false or overly simplistic assumptions in research, just as it is surprisingly easy to connect two events or thoughts that occur around the same time when there are no real ties between them.
There are many terms for this kind of mistake in social science research, complete with academic jargon and overly complicated phrasing. In the context of our thoughts and beliefs, these mistakes are referred to as “cognitive distortions.”
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A growing literature on posttraumatic headache suggests that many of the accepted principles of onset, course, and treatment should be re-examined. Data suggest that pathogenesis is multidimensional, and neurologists still lack evidence-based treatments, according to a lecture delivered at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Southern Clinical Neurological Society.
When Does Onset Occur? To begin with, research is calling the current definition of posttraumatic headache into question. Data culled from head injuries in the military, professional sports, and everyday trauma show that headache onset more than seven days after the trauma is not the exception it once was believed to be.
"Regarding soldiers in particular, only 37% report posttraumatic headache onset within seven days of their injury," reported Bert B. Vargas, MD, Director of the Sports Neurology and Concussion Program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "The rest of them presented up to several weeks later."
Of these others, 20% developed headache from one week to one month after the head trauma, and the remaining patients, more than 40% of the total, noted onset of headache more than a month later. "This is compelling evidence that seven days is perhaps not really the right timeframe" when considering a diagnosis of posttraumatic headache and suggests a need to revisit existing diagnostic criteria, said Dr. Vargas.
What if Blunt Trauma and Blast Injuries May Require Different Types of Treatment?
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2) What We Are Reading We Think You Might Enjoy
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CONGRATULATIONS TO
TROY MILDREN
Winner of Last Week's "What We Are Reading" Book Giveaway!
Ketchup on the Baseboard: Rebuilding Life After Brain Injury
by Carolyn Rocchio
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Hey! You Can Win a Book, Too!
Subject Line: I Like To Read!
and we will enter your name into a drawing to receive a free copy of the book below.
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When Abigail Thomas’s husband, Rich, was hit by a car, his brain shattered. Subject to rages, terrors, and hallucinations, he must live the rest of his life in an institution. He has no memory of what he did the hour, the day, the year before.
This tragedy is the ground on which Abigail had to build a new life. How she built that life is a story of great courage and great change, of moving to a small country town, of a new family composed of three dogs, knitting, and friendship, of facing down guilt and discovering gratitude. It is also about her relationship with Rich, a man who lives in the eternal present, and the eerie poetry of his often uncanny perceptions.
This wise, plainspoken, beautiful book enacts the truth Abigail discovered in the five years since the accident: You might not find meaning in disaster, but you might, with effort, make something useful of it.
For more on this great book:
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1) Quote We Are Contemplating...
“Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.”
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Want to find a story from a past #5ThoughtsFriday blog posts, visit the archive by clicking
HERE
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info@biamd.org
or contacting us on Twitter.
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#5ThoughtsFriday
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Thanks for reading! Have a wonderful weekend.
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