The role of the traditional Iranian medicine as a treatment of chronic headache: a case series study

Headache is one of the most common medical complaints of humankind that occurs in all age groups and is the seventh leading reason for medical office visits. The most common cause of chronic headache is migraine that affects an estimated 10-15% of the population. However, many drugs are useful for treatment of headache, current conventional medications have many side effects. Therapeutic trials of medication do not provide diagnostic information due to high frequency of placebo responders (~30%). But traditional medicine of different nations and other complementary medicine have obtained promising results. This case series study, will report five cases of chronic headache referred to the Mustafa Khomeini hospital in Tehran, responders to traditional drugs. The mean age of patients was 38 years old; all the patients were women with chronic migraine headache (according to the diagnostic criteria of international headache society-2003). They have been evaluated and after rule out of other causes of chronic headaches, conventional medications under the provision of physicians were prescribed for them. Treatment of these patients was based on the basic principles of T.I.M and the patients have been followed up for about 4 to 12 months. Both the frequency and intensity of the headache attacks were greatly reduced and the quality of life of the patients was improved notably (according to pain scale and self-report of the patients). No adverse reaction of medications was seen. This case series, as a pilot study, would like to confirm T.I.M as a kind of promising treatments for chronic migraine because of the beneficial effects, any or few side effects, availability for almost all patients and financial benefits, T.I.M can be taken into consideration by scientists to solve the problems prevailing in some disorders such as chronic headache however it is necessary to make more studies in this area for confirming the perfect benefits of such medications.