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Abuse of Pain Medication Can Give Kids Chronic Headaches
In this day-in-age there has definitely been an increase in medication use for headaches. You see it all the time in the media with all the commercials saying, "Got a headache, take an aspirin." Well unfortunately all of this propaganda has found its way to the children and now if they too have a small headache they get a pill to take. Unfortunately, it has been revealed in research that by giving a child medication too often can in fact have the opposite affect and do more harm by actually giving them chronic headaches, not to mention all the stress you care putting on their stomachs and kidneys. Why this occurs is simply the fact that the body will stop making painkillers for itself because it is getting them from an outside source and then the child is forced to repeatedly take the medication all the time so they can get the painkillers to relieve their headaches because their body doesn't make them anymore…in short they are trapped in a vicious circle.
Most of the time headaches are a symptom of a greater underlying problem, and not just a shortage of medication in your bloodstream. Before you get trapped in continually taking medication would it not be safer to check the structure, namely the spine, to make sure it is working properly, and if it needs to be adjusted then you are fixing the problem, and not just covering up a symptom.
Here is a summery of the research being done that was reprinted in a New York newspaper:
Tuesday June 26, 2001
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Overuse of common over-the-counter pain medications such as aspirin, acetaminophen, and codeine for headaches can actually trigger chronic headaches in adolescents, a team of Israeli researchers reports.
"Pediatricians...should be aware of the possibility that the continuous progressive increase in headache frequency might be due to abuse, even of the ’harmless’ acetaminophen," write Dr. Rachel Hering-Hanit, a neurologist at the Meir General Hospital in Kfar Saba, and colleagues. "They should avoid advising children to take pain medications ’at liberty’."
Although scientists are not certain why pain medications can lead to chronic headaches, many believe that the introduction of the drugs induces the brain to produce less pain-killing chemicals on its own.
"The more of these medications you take, the less your own brain makes," Dr. Merle L. Diamond, associate director of the Diamond Headache Clinic in Chicago, Illinois, told Reuters Health. "We certainly know it in adults. It's nice to see it documented in kids."
Over three years, the Israeli researchers treated 26 adolescents with chronic headaches. The findings are published in the June issue of the Journal of Child Neurology.
At the start of the study, the children reported experiencing headaches on 25 days out of the month. The average number of tablets taken by each patient was 28 each week, with 16 using pain medication daily. But two months after stopping all pain medications, the children reported suffering headaches for fewer than 3 days a month.
Although the researchers documented more than a decade ago that overuse of pain medications triggers headaches in up to 15% of adults who visit headache clinics, the similar effect on children was only first reported in 1998.
"This disorder is practically unknown to pediatricians," Dr. Natan Gadoth, professor of neurology at Tel Aviv University in Israel, told Reuters Health. "Patients, parents and caretakers should be familiar with this disorder and make every effort to enroll the child in a gradual withdrawal regimen which is safe and easy to complete at the home setting."
Most parents are unaware of how much their teenagers may be self-medicating, Diamond noted. "If your child is complaining of daily headaches and they're old enough to open that cap, it's important to keep an eye on how much your kids are using," she said.
"Our general rule is no more than two days of treatment a week. If your kid needs more than that, they need to get other preventative therapies or life management treatment," Diamond advised.
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