HEADACHES AND MIGRAINE: CEREBRAL BLOOD FLOW

admin — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 15:27:51 +0000

Recent exciting discoveries have revolutionized our ideas of the relationship between thought and blood flow. Previously it was considered that thinking did not use any significant amount of energy and the blood flow to the brain was constant. It is now known, however, that when a group of brain cells is activated it uses up oxygen, produces carbon dioxide, and causes a local increase in blood flow to that area by enlarging the blood vessels.

Using radioactive tracers it is now possible to follow these changes and remarkable pictures have been obtained. For instance, the resting pattern of blood flow shows a marked increase in the frontal areas; talking to the subject causes a decrease of flow to these areas whilst part of the temporal lobe of the brain shows a marked increase of activity – dynamic proof of the long-held hypothesis that this area is one of the speech centers. Similar things happen when other intellectual activities are undertaken so that these techniques confirm localization of various functions in specific areas of the brain. This close relationship between blood vessels and brain cells leads to interesting possibilities. For instance, if the control of blood vessels were to be deranged, subtle changes in brain function could be expected; this has been confirmed in certain forms of mental disease.

Pain has been shown to increase metabolism in the brain and to dilate vessels generally. The increase in vessel diameter makes small local controlling changes more difficult and this could explain why thinking becomes more difficult during severe pain. The paradox is that pain, like stress, produces increased sympathetic activity, yet it increases blood flow to the brain. The resulting vasoconstriction would be expected to decrease it. The answer is probably that the sympathetic controls the larger, so-called resistance vessels, while pain in this context activates local capillaries.

The system which controls blood flow to the brain is highly complex as it is affected by nervous factors, circulating chemicals (amines), and outside factors such as pain, as well as by mental processes. An interesting experiment highlighted the importance of the latter: subjects had to solve problems of mental arithmetic while their brain blood flow was being measured. There was a slight increase to appropriate areas but this became greatly magnified when they were offered money for the successful solution to the problems. This shows that motivation and concentration have a direct effect on the blood flow to the brain and the experiment clearly confirms yet another psychosomatic link.

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HOW REDUCING STRESS CAN ALLEVIATE BACK PAIN SYMPTOMS: WHAT’S YOUR STRESS LEVEL?

admin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:09:35 +0000

It’s a fact that many highly-stressed individuals simply refuse to accept that they may be more stressed than is good for them; this denial, of course, allows them to ignore the situation and just carry on as before. But there is no question that all of us, no matter how much we may like to think that we’re always totally in full control of our emotions, are to a greater or lesser degree susceptible to stress, either because we over-react to events or because we have a low stress tolerance level in the first instance.

Although a little bit of undue stress now and then may not do a great deal of harm, ongoing undue stress at a high level certainly will eventually exact a price to be paid in overall poorer health, whether this manifests itself as back pain or any one of a dozen other conditions whose incidence is at least partly linked to stress or worsened by it.

Doctors, of course, have many ways of determining whether someone is overstressed, but there is also a very simple and remarkably accurate way of finding this out for yourself and that is to just ask yourself whether you’re under undue stress. If ‘yes’ is the answer that immediately springs to your mind in response to this self-questioning, then it is most likely that this will indeed be so. Equally, should your own self-assessment suggest that you’re not particularly stressed, then that, too, is most likely to be the correct conclusion.

Naturally, how much stress you’re under usually varies considerably from day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year. Just because you’re not feeling stressed at a given moment doesn’t necessarily mean that your body isn’t nevertheless paying a price for previous times when you might have been under a great deal of pressure.

Because stress is seldom constant in its intensity, many people fail to come up with either a clear-cut ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer when they ask themselves whether they’re stressed, instead saying things like, “Well, I do get stressed now and then, but I can cope with it and it doesn’t bother me” or “No, I’m pretty sure that I’m not under great stress – well, perhaps now and then things do get on top of me.”

When you try this self-test and find that your own answer sounds a bit like those above, then most experts would suggest that you are indeed at least partly affected by stress. And, if you’re having back problems, then the chances are that somewhere along the way stress has made a considerable difference to how much these have affected you. If so, it follows logically that reducing or controlling your stress level in the future is likely either to reduce your back problems or at least make them more bearable.

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Weight Loss » Pain Relief-Muscle Relaxers

HEADACHES AND MIGRAINE: CEREBRAL BLOOD FLOW

HOW REDUCING STRESS CAN ALLEVIATE BACK PAIN SYMPTOMS: WHAT’S YOUR STRESS LEVEL?