Findings from Nationwide Children’s Hospital physicians find that headaches increase in fall in children. It’s a trend that may be due to back-to-school changes in stress, routines and sleep. Common triggers include poor hydration, and prolonged screen time.
“When we saw many of our families and patients in clinic, the families would report that their child or teenager’s headaches would increase during the school year,” said Ann Pakalnis, MD, lead researcher, attending neurologist and Director of the Comprehensive Headache Clinic at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, Ohio. “So, we decided to go back and look at emergency department visits for that time periods and see if there were more visits here at certain seasonal variations during the year.”
Results found that when monthly emergency department visits are grouped seasonally, there is an increase in headaches in the fall in children ages five to 18-years-old.
“We see a lot of headaches in young boys, from five to nine years of age, and in boys they tend to get better in later adolescence.,” said Dr. Pakalnis. “In teenage girls, migraines oftentimes make their first presentation around the time of puberty and unfortunately tend to persist into adulthood.”
The increase in fall headaches may be attributed to many factors, including academic stressors, schedule changes, and an increase in extracurricular activity.
“Your brain is like your cell phone,” said Howard Jacobs, MD, a headache specialist at Nationwide Children’s. “If you don’t plug your cell phone in, it doesn’t have energy, it doesn’t work well. If you don’t plug your brain in by providing energy, it doesn’t work well and that causes headaches.”
According to Dr. Jacobs, headaches can often be prevented by eating three meals a day, getting enough sleep at night without napping during the day, drinking enough liquids, and working to remove the stresses in a child’s day. Patients should work with their child’s doctor to manage and prevent headaches.
“A sudden, severe headache or a change in the headache sensation from previous what we call ‘first or worst’ headaches should be evaluated,” said Dr. Jacobs. Another good rule of thumb is that if the headaches are interfering with a child’s normal routine, then it is time to get them evaluated, so therapy can be instituted to return your child’s life to normal.
sciencenews.com August 14, 2015