Monica Yant Kinney: Phila. becomes headache capital

The most fascinating tidbit I picked up at the International Headache Society's convention last week was how few of the experts feel their patients' pain.

Every specialist I met could go on for hours about the debilitating effect of migraines and tension headaches. But rare was the doctor suffering from a splitter.

Could it be that relieving all those aching heads provides neurologists some coveted peace of mind?

I popped into the Convention Center out of professional and personal curiosity. I'm one of the 46 percent of adults in the world who suffer from a headache disorder.

My medicine cabinet brims with over-the-counter elixirs and one powerful prescription for the rare migraine. I've had MRIs and CAT scans, seen a chiropractor and an acupuncturist. I've tried yoga and meditation. I've given up coffee and chased Excedrin with Coke.

The good news, one of the experts told me, is that my headaches are not my fault. They might even be a blessing in disguise.

"The primary headache is an inborn disorder," explained Cicek Wöber-Bingöl, a Turk at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria.

"Some people think you're lucky if you have a migraine because it's the brain's way of telling you to stop and rest," she added as I shuddered. "Sometimes, the brain just says, 'Enough is enough.' "

The headache conference opened with the Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church Choir belting out "Amazing Grace." The lecture lineup included less flashy talks on "thunderclap headaches" and "posttraumatic headaches."

Would-have-been first lady Cindy McCain revealed in her keynote address that she is among the 36 million Americans with migraines.

McCain said migraines should be classified as a disability given the estimated $20 billion a year they cost in medical expenses and lost productivity. She argued that headaches should be treated as seriously as cancer, pledging to use her fame and name to push for funding.

"This is not just a cause," McCain declared. "It's a crisis."

Headaches may seem like an intrinsically American ailment - we eat junk, work too much, sleep too little - but they're just as much of a scourge around the globe.

Young Il Rho, a pediatric neurologist from South Korea, told me 80 percent of his pint-size patients suffer from migraines.

"I see children 4 to 18," he explained, adding that Korean students have many stresses.

Dimos Mitsikostas treats Greek military families at his headache clinic at the Athens Naval Hospital. Most of his patients suffer headaches caused by taking too much medicine to treat other headaches.

"We call them 'medication overuse headaches,' " the Harvard-trained neurologist said. "They're using more than five tablets a week. Most are using more than five a day."

Helen Williams has no pill to use or overuse. The 44-year-old mother from Britain suffers from cluster headaches - also called "suicide headaches" because of the people who took their lives to escape the pain.

"I know eight people who attempted suicide since 2005," Williams said, somberly. "Four succeeded."

In a cluster attack, blood vessels expand, causing a stabbing sensation behind the eyes that some consider the most severe pain known to medicine. Williams and her 8-year-old son succumb most nights at 2 a.m.

"The pain is so intense you want to gouge your eyes out," she said. "It's two to four hours of pure, unadulterated hell."

Williams went to the conference with the Organization for Understanding Cluster Headaches (www.ouch-us.org ). As she talked, I could't help but notice that her modest one-woman booth stood opposite a gloriously lit exhibit promoting AstraZeneca's new migraine med, Zomig ZMT.

"That's our new melt tab," company rep Jack Webb said. "It's for people going through a migraine who can't swallow because they're nauseous."

And this melt tab is even better than the last one, he said, because it's orange-flavored.

So where's the citrus-tasting remedy for cluster headaches? Williams sighed and said drugmakers seemed fixated on migraines even though cluster sufferers, with their multiple and longer attacks, would consume exponentially more medicine if it existed.

"The drug companies are about making profits," she said. "Our job is to show them that cluster headaches are an untapped market."