If you have been considering getting a dog, add pain management to your list of reasons. According to a study in the journal of Pain Medicine, a therapy dog is a new addition to the pain management team.  According to Dr. Marcus who writes the well know migraine.com blog, “Therapy dogs have been trained to be quiet, calm, and soothing. Therapy dogs undergo extensive training and testing before they can be certified for therapy work. Typical therapy dogs' work involves the dog standing by or sitting with a patient and getting petted. It may not sound like this is much therapy, but studies have proven spending time with a therapy dog produces measureable reductions in stress levels and the body’s stress chemicals.”

There has been a lot of talk about “migraine triggers,” including diet, exercise and sleeping habits.  The most controversial is the idea of food triggers. “Although many people believe that some foods may trigger a migraine, the evidence remains a bit fuzzy,” says Elizabeth Loder, MD, MPH, the chief of the Division of Headache and Pain at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Loder points out that it is difficult to track food triggers because different foods may affect people in different ways. There’s also no consensus about how long it might take a dietary culprit to set off a headache so it’s difficult to pin down which foods are the real trouble makers.

According to the American Medical Association, more than 18% of women suffer from migraines. This statistic climbs to greater than 22% for pregnant women. Prescription drugs are the most commonly used prevention method. Unfortunately, many pharmaceutical options, such as valproate also present adverse side effects including the increased risk of birth defects.

In February, 2010, the FDA issued a reminder about the heightened risk of neural tube defects in babies exposed in-utero to medications that contain valproate. Valproate therapy, initially devised as a treatment for epilepsy, is frequently used for migraine and bipolar disorder. The average rate of birth defects among US newborns is approximately 1 in 1,500 but children born to mothers that used medications such as Depakote, Depacon, and Stavzor resulted in a birth defect rate of 1 in 20. The rate of neural tube defects in children exposed to valproate during the 1st trimester is approximately 80 times higher than that of the general US population.