<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \n By Tom Zeller Jr. Mariner Books.\n <\/p>\n \n Slate receives a commission when you purchase items using the links on this page. The Headache is an account of what we have learned about migraine and cluster headaches (less than you\u2019d think) and the state of research developing treatments. The newest of those treatments are blockers that inhibit the uptake of calcitonin gene-related peptide, CGRP, a \u201ckey chemical messenger in the nervous system\u2019s pain communication pathway,\u201d according to Zeller. Researchers knew that CGRP could induce migraines in experimental subjects (all praise the sacrifices of those heroes!), and this new class of drugs binds to the chemical to prevent it from binding to neural receptors.<\/p>\n Cluster headaches are relatively rare, but migraines are not, and one study calculated the cost to the U.S. economy of migraines alone is as much as $1 trillion. Yet research into the causes and cures for primary headaches has been sluggish, for reasons that are highly contested. While the medical explanations in The Headache occasionally made my eyes glaze over, Zeller\u2019s accounts of feuds among headache researchers and their combined wrath at what they insist is inadequate National Institutes of Health funding for their work offers a delectable blend of dish and substance. When one scientist likened migraine research to a massive Airbus plane requiring four fully fueled engines to get it off the ground, Zeller asked him what, exactly, was keeping the plane on the tarmac. \u201cToo many female passengers,\u201d was the reply.<\/p>\n Female migraineurs outnumber their male counterparts by 3 to 1, while the gender breakdown is reversed for cluster headaches. Many headache experts believe that this explains why migraine isn\u2019t taken seriously by the medical establishment, whose tendency to dismiss pain in female patients has been well documented. Zeller observes that cluster headache sufferers, by contrast, tend to hide their condition, something he himself did during an early stint at the New York Times. The Headache includes the story of an air traffic controller who concealed his cluster headaches for three decades, knowing that the condition would trigger an automatic medical disqualification from a job he loved. He resorted to keeping his medications (which did not impair his performance) secret and ducking out of work during an episode to inhale oxygen from a tank he kept in his car.<\/p>\n Tom Zeller For Zeller\u2019s part, he found it difficult to admit how debilitated he was by a disorder that many people conflate with the discomfort caused by a hangover. Cluster headaches, however, are often ranked among the worst pain a human can experience. While migraineurs tend to retreat to dark quiet rooms to wait out their affliction, people with cluster headaches are restless, often pacing, rocking, and pounding their heads. While cluster headaches don\u2019t last all day like a migraine, they can recur every day or multiple times per day within the window of a period that can last weeks or months, followed by a period of remission. In The Headache, Zeller relates the story of a young man whose cluster headaches proved so relentless and tormenting that he took his own life, grimly confirming the disorder\u2019s nickname: suicide headaches. Zeller himself recounts a period when, while working on a demanding story, he experienced a cluster attack and resorted to \u201cmedicating myself with absurd tides of chemical experimentation and excess,\u201d ranging from caffeine, steroids, and magnesium to a CGRP blocker called verapamil\u2014a drug on which he overdosed, passing out.<\/p>\n Though we have different kinds of headaches, there\u2019s much that\u2019s familiar to me in Zeller\u2019s account. I, too, have found it difficult to convey just how disabling a mere headache can be. And I certainly recognized Zeller\u2019s almost superstitious hoarding of medication doses, splitting them to stretch the supply, and the way Zeller would \u201cjealously count those blue injections like a Scrooge, worrying over their limited number, wondering whether they\u2019d last.\u201d These drugs are the treasure we require to placate an angry god. Insurance companies can be stingy with the number of doses they allow per month, so it\u2019s imperative to keep renewing the prescription regularly, even in the absence of headaches, so that you hit any future bad period with an ample supply. The fear of running out is petrifying\u2014although, thankfully, well in the past for me now that sumatriptan has gone generic and can be bought online. The more recently developed CGRP blockers, however, can be brutally expensive. And most primary headache medications only work for half the people who try them, and then often only half the time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n Laura Miller <\/a><\/p>\n Maddeningly, scientists still can\u2019t say what causes primary headaches. Fierce debate rages among them over whether these are disorders of the vascular system\u2014dilated blood vessels pressing against nerves\u2014or of the central nervous system, arising from some dysfunction in the brain. The hypothalamus, which regulates the autonomic nervous system, seems implicated in cluster headaches, with their mysterious link to the body\u2019s circadian rhythms. Migraines vary widely from person to person, but also in the same person during the course of a lifetime. My migraines once were synced to hormonal cycles. Now they only come at night, and especially when it rains or the humidity tops 75 percent. Or when my blood sugar gets too low. Or when I drink wine. I never experienced migraine aura\u2014a disturbance in vision\u2014until about 15 years ago. Now, my eyesight will occasionally be marred by a crescent of shimmering silver triangles (a classic migraine aura), but with no subsequent headache attached.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He Made a Joke So Racist Even Trump Rejected It. Now He\u2019s the Most Powerful Comic in America. We Officially Have the New SNL of the Trump Era![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0c27a125-9dcb-4cc5-b8bf-0cfc48add3ae.jpeg\")
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\nKristine Paulsen<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/67b26d0c-a469-4cec-87c3-d0d4acb9eb00.jpeg\")
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