What is Migraine? What Kind of a Disease is It? Is Every Headache Migraine?
Migraine is known as a headache but actually, it is more than that. It is a disease affecting the whole body. Migraine comes in attacks. There are some patients who squeeze, punch, hit to the walls and want to take off their heads because of the pain which is usually like throbbing and just on one side. Also, the patients may try to hide in their bedrooms due to light, noise and smell sensitivity.
Most of these patients have migraine running in their family, especially their mother. Migraineurs tend to be sensitive, detail-oriented, and perfectionist. The thing that migraineurs hear the most is “Of course you’ll have a headache. You care too much!” The sensitive characteristics of migraineurs is the result of the differences in their nervous system. Being overly open to stimulations sets the basis for migraine. Also, this increases creativity and the capacity to think. That is why most artists, scientists and philosophers are migraineurs.
Migraineurs are careful, productive and successful. They can multitask and think of multiple possibilities. As long as they don’t have headaches of course!
Migraine Has a Cure. It Can Be Treated.
Every pain is the body’s cry for help. Including migraine. And it has some reasons. It is time to break the old beliefs like “You have to learn to live with migraine”.
“EVERY PAIN HAS A REASON AND MIGRAINE CAN BE TREATABLE ONCE THE REASONS ARE DETECTED.”
How Does Migraine Happen?
Gokmen Approach says:
“Migraine results from the body, not the brain. Mainly, the reason is the electrical leakages in the autonomic nervous system which controls our whole body. These leakages have the ability to disturb all the system (when we are hungry, angry, sleep deprived etc.) This is a migraine attack and since it is just a bio electrical problem, all scans come back clean.”
Dr. Gokmen has turned to the reasons of migraine with this approach and benefited from neural therapy. Also, she specialized on tooth-jaw complex and developed Gokmen Approach using the experience she gained from thousands of patients.
What is Gokmen Approach?
Dr. Emel Gokmen, suffered from migraine since she was a little child, quit being a neurologist in a private hospital in 2004 and began focusing on migraine and headaches. Since she knew that migraine cannot be treated with drugs, she quit pharmacological treatment and showed that it is possible to treat migraine. Gokmen Approach is a treatment algorithm that evaluates migraine and headaches with a different approach and treats the reasons with unorthodox methods.
First, the patient’s detailed history is taken and possible reasons are detected. Then, some of those reasons are treated with neural therapy and for a major part patients might need to see a dental specialist.
What is Neural Therapy?
Neural therapy has been developed by two German anesthetists in the last century. It provides recovery by injecting short active local anesthetics to specific places on the body. However the substance is not the cure. Healing comes with its electrical effect, fixing the autonomic nervous system. It is both natural and scientific.
When we get tonsillitis, or have a tooth decay and get a filling, or have a C-section, the communication network in the corresponding area might be damaged. These areas, called the interference fields, are what is causing migraine. The leakage here sometimes affects the whole system. Main duty of this autonomic nervous system is to control the veins and bowels. And with migraine, both of this get out of control.
How to Treat Migraine?
To treat migraine, one should first find out the reasons of it. The source can be detected by learning the start date, how it started, where it affects and the characteristics of it. This reason can be problems like tonsillitis and C-sections sometimes but mostly it is dental problems. Other potential sources might be healed with neural therapy but for the teeth, it is absolutely necessary to work with specialists.
How Do Teeth Cause Migraine?
Everything about the teeth from smallest decays to fillings, root canal treatments, wisdom teeth, misaligned implants and gingivitis can cause migraine and headaches. Contrary to the common belief, the tooth pain is not wide enough to affect the head. Instead, the electrical leakage in the tooth affects the autonomic nervous system on both sides of the head and dilates the veins, hence comes the pain. The teeth of these patients do not hurt. It is their head. Dr. Gokmen, discovered the relations by studying tooth-jaw complex and refer the patients to dental specialists for the necessary treatments.
This approach provides solutions for migraine and headaches together with a side-effect-free preventive treatment.
Are All Headaches Migraine?
Most common headache is tension-type. The second common and the most well-known is migraine. And the most severe one is cluster headache. Tension type headache is not severe and it affects the whole head. Migraine is severe, it can be one-sided and it is mostly seen in women. Cluster headache is also one-sided but it is always on the same side and mostly seen in men.
Tension type headache is the result of the tense muscles in head and the neck. Stress increases the pain. While simple tension type patients have more pain at the end of the day and find relief in sleeping, others wake up in pain due to clenching their teeth at night. 80% of people suffer from tension type headache at least once in their lifetime.
40% of those develop constant tension type headache. This, shows itself as heaviness, pressure and squeezing on the head. These patients have attention and concentration deficits. It is impossible to change their perfectionist and overly responsible personalities but “Gokmen Approach” increase their life quality by relieving the muscles. Most of these patients clench their teeth. Night plates, applied by gnathology and prosthetic specialists will be very good for these patients.
Cluster headache is a severe pain that affects one eye and temple. The eye shrinks, waters and goes bleary and the same side of the nose gets stuck. Attacks come in the same months of the year and same times of the day. This routine is highly remarkable. The attacks usually do not take more than 1-2 hours. Another name for cluster headache is “suicidal headache” because it is so severe. Also, this is mostly seen in young and middle-aged men.
Although cluster headache is considered incurable as migraine, Gokmen Approach can treat it. The source is the teeth and a delicate treatment on teeth would be enough.
Migraine Solutions!
In this book where Dr. Gokmen shares her experiences with her readers; scientific, resulting and real treatment methods of migraine and headache are explained. The reasons and solutions of headaches are told with the help of stories of many patients varying from babies to elderly people. This book, containing similar stories for every headache patient, provides a better understanding of migraine and migraineurs for the reader.
“I lived my own migraine again and again with each patient and felt suffocated with their ongoing pain. So be it. At the end we got better and happier together… Now I know that my long lasting struggle for curing migraine is based on the ‘fellowship of sufferers.” These words belong to Dr. Gokmen. Her migraine attacks since childhood caused her to become a physician to cure all these.
Migraine Solutions!, though created mainly for patients, is a useful and eye-opening resource for clinicians, academic physicians and dentists as well.
MILLIYET NEWSPAPER, MAY 2015