Heal Your Headache: The 1-2-3 Program for Taking Charge of Your Pain

Step 1: Avoid the "Quick Fix." Too often painkillers only make matters worse because of the crippling complication known as rebound.

Step 2: Reduce Your Triggers. The crux of the program: a migraine diet that eliminates the foods that push headache sufferers over the top.

Step 3: Raise Your Threshold. When diet and other lifestyle changes aren't enough, preventive medication can help stay the course.

That's it: in three steps turn your headache problems around.

Incredible. The advice in this book changed the life of a three decade migraine sufferer who teaches medical ethics. I have sent copies to family, friends and colleagues. Finally, here is clinically based assistance, given by one of the best minds in the country. It combines theoretical acumen with that rare combination of an outstanding neurologist, compassionate clinician and incisive un-masker of snake-oil remedies. Here are constructive suggestions that work. You won't find Buchholz's name on aspirin bottles; he is on no one's payroll. But you will find him frequently quoted by Time Magazine, Newsweek, etc., as one of the country's foremost experts concerning headaches. In an era when so-called experts assumed the marketplace would be the magic pill that would cure the headache of our nation's healthcare, read about why marketing hype of short term headache relief is part of the problem. At a time when so many of us desperately clamor for relief that is believed only to be available from expensively inaccessible specialists, read about how a pro-active, well-tested common sense approach that puts you in charge of your headaches, delivers results you can trust. It works. As announced on the cover and repeated throughout the book, the golden nugget of advice is contrary to long held assumptions in many respects. Thus this advice is necessary; avoiding quick fix painkillers, which can cause rebound headaches; minimizing triggers like caffeine, perfumes, certain foods and stress and, for hardcore cases, using preventative medications such as tricyclic antidepressants, calcium channel blockers and others. How these work and fit into a comprehensive program are the genius of the book. This not cure but care; this is not miracle but management; thank you Dr. Buchholz for helping us see how and why we headache sufferers can take responsibility for at some part of what ails us.

Are you tired of consuming headache medicines like they were candy? Learn about why you should be. This book is rare common sense for folks who want to know how live well and manage their headaches in an era when medical paternalism is a thing of the past ("doctor knows best") and a team approach to outcomes-based clinical care is welcome. Yet migraine is a phenomenon still misunderstood by those most important to us. Hence, to add to our misery, families and co-workers still remain too quickly dismissive of our "headache syndrome." Who among us has not travelled on the lonely and familiar pilgrimage of self-doubt, self-denial, self-medication, and a series of mistaken diagnoses ranging from ignorance ("bruxisms," "dental TMJ"), minimalizations ("get a lower-stress job"), under-trained pain management assessments ("you need more medicine") from assorted "health care professionals"? In contrast, here is advice to use, not diagnose, but to prevent and manage your headaches.

Stop working against yourself. Stop foraging through more than 400 books in English dealing with migraines and headaches. Stop contemplating the exotic remedies of stars in glossy magazines (silly ex-lax purgatives and sweat lodges). Stop waking up with the dread of another painful day. Stop feeling like a self-inflicted invalid to your family and friends as well as a pain weasel to your doctor. Stop squinting at the rows of over-the-counter headache medicines, with their receding lines of temporary promises.

Learn about all that can happen with self involvement in your own treatment from the best tour guide you will ever meet. Few have his keen ability to map the terrain, chart the territory, point out interesting sights, capably explain and practically apply contested theories about causes of headaches and migraines, as well as survey new classes of medicines (e.g. the vascular theory, the cortical spreading depression theory, the neurovascular hypothesis, the serotonergic abnormalities hypothesis, the integrated hypothesis).

In short, don't even try sorting these out on your own. Let this clear and articulate author be your guide. This is the best health maintenance program for your migraine. Or suffer with headaches. The choice is yours. I have not been the same since I chose. This is the single best survival guide for headaches in an era that needs a physician as educator not patronizer, as enabler of health not pharmacist for acute care, as patient's partner, not the employer of insurance companies encouraged to see "headache sufferers" as incurably complaining and expensive "clients".

Dr. William.Joseph Buckley


Finally something that works!   October 2, 2002
P. Boggs (Salem, VA USA)
25 out of 27 found this review helpful

Dr. Buchholz' has the answer to my migraine problem. His three step process (get off of current drugs, diet to avoid headache triggers, and preventive medicine only if you must) has given me two months of headache freedom. I've traded almost constant migraine for an occasional minor headache and that's getting better too. I think he's really figured it out.

Dr. Buchholz also ties in several other head and neck ailments like "arthritis in the neck," and shows how these are related to migraines. Read the book, take his advice, expect major improvement.


Blaming the Victim   December 2, 2003
21 out of 42 found this review helpful

Before shelling out money for this book, be aware that, if you suffer from more than the very occassional migraine, the first step you will be expected to follow in 'curing' your headaches is to suffer several months of unrelieved agony. He requires that you stop treating all your migraines and simply suffering through them, until they .. somehow .. stop occuring on their own.

Buchholz is a firm believer in the most extreme version of the 'rebound' theory of migraines -- that, by treating our headaches as much as twice a month, we are, in fact, causing them to happen. (Isn't it funny that nobody ever suggests that, by using pain relievers, arthritis sufferers, or people with cancer or post operative pain are actually 'causing' their pain, but that migraines are, in some mysterious way, caused by the very drugs we need to take to treat them and make our lives managable.)

He then follows this with the the old 'it's all caused by what we eat' so you need to also eliminate all the foods you have ever enjoyed from your diet' snake oil, that I've also heard a thousand times before. (And no, he gives no scientific rational for any of his theories. He fails to even attempt to explain how using narcotics or triptans more than twice a month cause migraines to suddenly start to occur on a daily basis. (Yes, I've seen the 'rebound' theory before, but most doctors who subscribe to it at least claim that it results only after daily or near daily use of pain meds, not once in two weeks!)

If you only get the occassional headache, you may find it worth dropping all your meds for a few months to see if it helps. But for the rest of us ... we'll stick with what we have, however, imperfect, and keep looking for a more rational, definitive cure.


Living in the migraine capital of the world...   March 27, 2003
L. Sparks (Calgary, Alberta, Canada)
20 out of 21 found this review helpful

Ten years ago, I had the opportunity to be Dr. Buchholz's patient while living in the NE. We worked together until finding that Verapamil was the best solution for avoiding migraine. I was able to discontinue the Verapamil for the past five years until moving to Calgary, Alberta Canada (the migraine capital of the world!)for a two year job assignment. Dr. Buchholz graciously spoke with me "long distance" and said "I have finished the book and it is available...please read it and we can talk again." The triggers have multiplied since moving here (Chinook winds-falling barometric pressure) and it is great to have the book as a resource for reclaiming a headache free environment. I am amazed at the many people who suffer from these headaches and are so excited to have the recommendation of Dr. Buchholz's book. My GP photocopied the front of the book and is pleased to have the resource for his patients, as well. The rebound medications (quick-fixes) were such a temptation but the clear, easy-reading solutions in the book allow me to take control. It's great to talk to Dr. Buchholz, but even better to have Heal Your Headache.