Norwegian researchers published their study in the latest issue of Neurology.

They looked at 5,847 adolescents, which is a large number and which makes their findings more reliable. Thirty one percent of these kids were not exercising regularly, 19% smoked and 16% were overweight. Very similar statistics have been reported in the American adolescents. Each of these three factors were found to be associated with an increased risk of all types of headaches. These risk factors were additive – risk of headaches was higher if two factors were present and even higher with three.

Of course, this association does not prove a cause and effect connection. It is likely that having these risk factors does not cause headaches, but rather worsens the condition in someone who is already predisposed to headaches (such as in those with genetic predisposition).

Smoking could also be a triggering factor – causing individual attacks in a susceptible individual. An editorial by Drs. Hershey and Lipton which accompanied the article suggested that another possibility is that whatever causes obesity and smoking may also be causing headaches (for example, anxiety and depression).

Low physical activity could be due to headaches and can be the cause of obesity. Similar association between headaches and smoking, obesity and lack of exercise has been shown to be present in adults as well.

The bottom line, however, is simple – kids (and adults) with (and without) headaches should not smoke, try to exercise regularly and try to maintain normal weight.

They discovered that these veterans were more sensitive to experimentally-induced pain (from a heat source). They also had more pain when they tried to exercise and were even more sensitive to experimental pain after the exercise than they were before.

This is a difficult obstacle to overcome – pain gets worse when you try to exercise, but if you persist, pain gets better in the long run. This is what doctors often hear, “but doctor, it hurts too much to exercise”.

One way to overcome this obstacle is to start with a very light and brief exercise routine, but try to exercise daily and gradually increase the duration and the intensity. Another approach is to take an anti-inflammatory pain killer in the family of aspirin an hour before exercise. After a few weeks taking medicine may become unnecessary. Acupuncture, anti-depressant medications, and various supplements (magnesium, CoQ10) can also help.

They published their results in the journal Headache. Since the hereditary nature of certain types of headaches has been well established it was not surprising to find that kids with headaches very often had mothers with headaches. However, this is the first study that showed that the more frequent headaches are in the mother, the more frequent they are in the child.

The same group of researchers examined how many pre-adolescent children have daily or very frequent headaches (more than 10 days a month). Their findings were recently published in Neurology. They found that 2.5% of children suffered from very frequent or daily headaches.

Parents and doctors often dismiss child’s complaint of headaches, thinking that the he or she is mimicking the parent or is seeking attention, but in fact the child suffers and should be taken seriously. A wide variety of non-drug treatments are available for kids, including biofeedback, magnesium, CoQ10, and other supplements.

The results were obtained from detailed questionnaires given to 1260 teenagers in Munich’s public schools.

Interestingly, skipping meals and not drinking enough fluids did not seem to cause headaches, while these two factors were found to cause headaches in some studies of adults. However, regular consumption of alcohol (at least once a week) or caffeine (at least one cup of coffee a day), smoking, and lack of physical activity strongly correlated with having more frequent headaches. Only 43% of the students did not drink and 73% never smoked. Of 1260 students, 83.1% reported having a headache at least once during the previous 6 months.

The results of this study should lead to educational programs that may reduce the incidence of headaches in high school kids. In addition to the existing efforts to encourage kids to stop drinking and smoking, there is a need to inform them about the potential of caffeine and lack of exercise in causing headaches. Both caffeine and lack of exercise have already been shown to increase the risk of frequent headaches in several large studies.

In summary, if a teen suffers from headaches, caffeine, alcohol, smoking, and lack of exercise could be contributing factors. Although skipping meals and not drinking enough water were not found to correlate with headaches in this study, some individual headache sufferers report that these two factors can also trigger headaches.

Dr. Bruns and his colleagues who have published several other studies on related topics, feel that their most important findings are that patients with chronic pain are at greater risk for thinking about violence, suicide, and homicide-suicide than the general population, and that suicide and homicide are often thought of together. Other studies have shown that people who suffer from chronic pain are more likely to succeed in their suicide attempt.

Despite these statistically valid findings, most people who think about homicide-suicide very rarely do it. However, no matter how small, the risk is real and ways of reducing this risk need to be developed. Another area of concern for Dr. Burns is violence against doctors. In one survey 63% of physicians reported being abused or assaulted by patients in the previous year.

This may contribute to lower risk of breast and ovarian cancers, according to researchers at Harvard Medical School who published their results in Cancer Epidemiololgy, Biomarkers & Prevention. The authors of the study called for additional large studies to confirm their findings of lower estrogen levels and to establish if taking these medications in fact reduces the risk of certain forms of cancer.

These potential benefits of taking analgesics on a regular basis should be weighed against potential risks, such as stomach bleeding from aspirin and other NSAIDs and liver toxicity from acetaminophen.