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Query: UMLS:C0018681 (headache)
 56,091 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Little is known about specific changes of cognitive processing in cluster headache. Studies on event-related potentials (ERP) suggest that stimulus evaluation is impaired in chronic cluster headache and in episodic cluster headache during the cluster period, but not in the interval between two periods. Patients with chronic paroxysmal hemicrania do not show this impairment. Unlike patients with migraine, patients with cluster headache do not present with a loss of cognitive habituation as measured by ERP. In neuropsychologic evaluations, a reversible decline of memory processing was detected during the cluster attack, but not between two attacks. Long-term observation revealed no progressive cognitive decline in cluster headache patients over the years. With regard to personality changes, a liability susceptibility to anxiety disorders and to hypochondriasis, but not to mood changes, has been described inconsistently. All changes in alterations of cognitive processing in cluster headache are demonstrated to be mild and do not relevantly contribute to the clinical picture of this disease.
Curr Pain Headache Rep 2005 Apr
PMID:Cognitive processing in cluster headache. 1574 20

After returning from the Beagle in 1836, Charles Darwin suffered for over 40 years from long bouts of vomiting, gut pain, headaches, severe tiredness, skin problems, and depression. Twenty doctors failed to treat him. Many books and papers have explained Darwin's mystery illness as organic or psychosomatic, including arsenic poisoning, Chagas' disease, multiple allergy, hypochondria, or bereavement syndrome. None stand up to full scrutiny. His medical history shows he had an organic problem, exacerbated by depression. Here we show that all Darwin's symptoms match systemic lactose intolerance. Vomiting and gut problems showed up two to three hours after a meal, the time it takes for lactose to reach the large intestine. His family history shows a major inherited component, as with genetically predisposed hypolactasia. Darwin only got better when, by chance, he stopped taking milk and cream. Darwin's illness highlights something else he missed--the importance of lactose in mammalian and human evolution.
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PMID:Darwin's illness revealed. 1581 89

This study was designed to study patients with intolerance to pesticide smells. Ten subjects chosen were complaining of vague symptoms such as headache, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, myalgia, flu-like symptoms, etc., whenever exposed to the pesticide smells even at low intensity. To determine whether the etiology of this kind of pesticide hypersensitivity was of organic or psychiatric nature, all the subjects underwent tests as follows: complete blood cell count, urinalysis, and blood chemistry as routine tests; esophogastroduodenoscopy and abdomen ultrasonography for the gastrointestinal symptoms; chest x-ray, pulmonary function tests, and electrocardiography for the respiratory and/or cardiac symptoms; nerve conduction velocity and brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for peripheral and central nerve system symptoms; and K-WAIS, Rey-Kim memory test, Rorschach, Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) for psychoanalysis. Of the 10 cases in which the chief complaint was headache, symptoms of two cases were caused by maxillary sinusitis. Another two showed typical multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) or idiopathic environmental intolerance (IEI). Six out of the 10 cases, whose symptoms closely resembled the others, did not conclusively meet the criteria of classic MCS or IEI. The subjects of this case shared vague fears, both fear of pesticides and hypochondriasis. Some subjects faced financial insecurity and social uncertainty; others felt uneasy about the future of their farming life. Thus, to help verify the causes of MCS or IEI, which is strongly suggestive of pesticide smells, diagnosis needs a dual approach: on the anima and soma. Psychoanalysis can delve into the mental status of the patients to see whether the patients are aware of their symptoms. Clinical tests can see through the physical structure and functions of the organs on which patients' complaints are centered.
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PMID:Pesticide-initiated idiopathic environmental intolerance in South Korean farmers. 1749 36

This study examines experiences of individual patients and psychiatrists in the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins between 1913 and 1917. The dynamics of these patient-psychiatrist interactions elucidate the well-known conceptual shift in explanations of mental illness during the twentieth century, from somatic models rooted in the logic of "neurasthenia" and damaged nerves to psychodynamic models based on the notion of "subconscious conflict." A qualitative analysis of 336 cases categorized as functional disorders (a catchall term in this period for illnesses that could not be confirmed as organic diseases), shows that patients explained their symptoms and suffering in terms of bodily malfunctions, and, particularly, as a "breakdown" of their nervous apparatus. Psychiatrists at the Phipps Clinic, on the other hand, working under the direction of its prominent director, Adolf Meyer, did not focus their examinations and therapies on the body's nervous system, as patients expected. They theorized that the characteristic symptoms of functional disorders-chronic exhaustion, indigestion, headaches and pain, as well as strange obsessive and compulsive behaviors-resulted from a distinct pathological mechanism: a subconscious conflict between powerful primal and social impulses. Phipps patients were often perplexed when told their physical symptoms were byproducts of an inner psychological struggle; some rejected the notion, while others integrated it with older explanations to reconceptualize their experiences of illness. The new concept also had the potential to alter psychiatrists' perceptions of disorders commonly diagnosed as hysteria, neurasthenia, or psychoneuroses. The Phipps records contain examples of Meyer and his staff transcending the frustration experienced by many doctors who had observed troubling but common behaviors in such cases: morbid introspection, hypochondria, emotionalism, pity-seeking, or malingering. Subconscious conflict recast these behaviors as products of "self-deception," which both absolved the sufferer and established an objective clinical marker by which a trained specialist could recognize functional disorder. Using individual case studies to elucidate the disjunction between patients' and psychiatrists' perspectives on what all agreed were debilitating illnesses, this analysis helps to illuminate the origins of a radical transformation in psychiatric knowledge and popular culture in the twentieth century-from somatic to psychodynamic explanations of mental illness.
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PMID:"MY RESISTING GETTING WELL": NEURASTHENIA AND SUBCONSCIOUS CONFLICT IN PATIENT-PSYCHIATRIST INTERACTIONS IN PREWAR AMERICA. 2691 53


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