Managing a painful and debilitating disease with no known cure is an uphill struggle for doctors and patients alike.

People who experience episodic migraine know how painful and debilitating the attacks can be. Now, these patients have a new option for stopping attacks before they start.

By Christopher Gottschalk, MD, FAHS

Headaches are just an excuse to avoid everyday responsibilities, society sometimes tells us, certainly not a “real” medical problem. My years of treating patients prove this stereotype utterly inaccurate.

For some people living with migraine disease, trying to access appropriate medication has become a headache – literally.

Patients suffering from cluster headache may soon enjoy a breath of fresh air. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced last month a proposed decision to make home-use oxygen a coverable treatment for cluster headache.

For the 39 million Americans who experience migraine headaches, noninvasive devices offer a new option for stopping painful symptoms. Insurers, however, are giving the devices the cold shoulder.

A new Medicare policy is having unintended consequences for people with migraine disease and movement disorders, recent survey findings reveal.

By Mary Franklin, MA

This fall, Congress introduced a first-of-its-kind resolution that acknowledged the ways migraine disease affects millions of Americans. For me and the headache and migraine disease community, the action was acknowledgment of how far we’ve come in gaining recognition of the debilitating condition that affects 39 million Americans.

Some people living with migraine disease and movement disorders are finding it takes longer to get treatment, if they can even access it at all.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made managing migraine disease more difficult, according to a new national survey of patients.

A first-of-its-kind congressional resolution is shedding light on how migraine disease impacts millions of Americans, many of them women.

Imagine if a painfully debilitating condition was best treated with good, old-fashioned oxygen. Simple, right?

By Lindsay Videnieks, JD, and Katie M. Golden, PP (professional patient)

For three decades, those living with migraine disease demanded and waited for new treatment options tailored to their disease, instead of being prescribed off-label medications developed for other diseases

Mounting access barriers to headache and migraine treatments have sparked concerns among patients and providers.

As the number of coronavirus cases grows, policymakers and patients alike are eager to bypass avoidable trips to medical clinics and the ER. Enter telemedicine.

This year’s World Brain Day, July 22, is aimed at raising awareness of the most common brain disease in the world: migraine.  It affects more than 38 million Americans and is the second leading cause of disability worldwide.

Patients shouldn’t have to endure debilitating symptoms day after day when there is a medication that could help them.  Yet that’s what’s happening in Mississippi to people with migraine. 

“Restrictive insurance policies keep patients from the very medications that can prevent and treat [headache and migraine disease],” asserts the inaugural position paper from the Alliance for Patient Access’ Headache and Migraine Disease Working Group.  

“It was so bad.  It just wouldn’t quit.”  Sara, a new patient, was sitting in my office describing a migraine attack that had led to a recent hospitalization.  Except it wasn’t exactly the migraine that led to hospitalization. It was, I found out, an attempted suicide, prompted by the relentless impact of chronic migraine.

Migraine disease exists on a spectrum, presenting patients with different frequencies of attacks, whose duration and effect vary from person to person.  Treating migraine disease is, therefore, an exercise in mixing and matching, trial and error.