As a practicing nurse for over 18 years, author Wendy Cohan uses her training, professional observations and personal experience to describe symptoms, diagnosis, and pharmaceutical, surgical and alternative treatments for headaches.

The book is for readers that suffer from tension, migraine, chronic and other types of debilitating headache pain. Emphasis is placed on discovering headache triggers, prevention, minimizing pain, treatment of headaches, and when to seek professional help.

A glossary, resource list, an extensive bibliography organized by chapter topic, and index is included. The “weekly headache diary”, provided in the appendix as a template in which to record contributing factors, pain scale, symptoms, medication taken, and etc., to isolate triggers. ( )

What Nurses Know... Headaches is as the title suggest written by a nurse who has experienced chronic headaches and researched everything there is to know about them. This book is comprehensive and describes every type of headache, causes, treatments and diagnosis. The beauty of it is that there is a minimum of obscure medical terms that only an MD would understand. It is very readable. I do not myself suffer from anymore than an occasional tension headache, but I learned a great deal on that subject, and ways to alleviate them. A good deal of the book is devoted to non-medical interventions, eg. use of supplements, lifestyle changes etc. I have a daughter and close friend who suffer from chronic migraines and they both found helpful explanations and tips they can immediately use to lessen the intensity and shorten the length of their discomfort. Any headache sufferer would benefit from this book, it is well organized and indexed. You can choose to read the sections relevant to you and keep it as a handly reference. ( )

This is an excellent reference book for headaches, and although the medical language is a little much at times, it can still be understood by a layperson.
She thoroughly explains many of the most common types of headaches, with much detail given to migraines. But, as a sinus sufferer, I wish she had discussed sinus headaches a little bit more. However, I did appreciate her references to some herbal remedies that may help sinus problems.

The fact that she dedicates whole chapters to describe headaches in children and women is very significant and worthwhile. It was also interesting to find out all the different disorders and diseases that are associated with headaches, as well learning how to notice life-threatening or dangerous headaches. This information was very educational. The book is a wealth of resources and information very worthwhile for headache suffers and their care-givers. In addition, as a sinus sufferer I will most definitely utilize the headache diary tool she provides. ( )

Wendy Cohan sets out to and largely succeds in constructing a medicial reference book for those that suffer from headaches or know someone who does. This is a professionally written book grounded in medical fact and practice and while professional, is still accessible to the casual reader. The structure is awkward at times and it should probably be used more like a reference work than a book to sit down and read. While the information in the book is well-thoughout and helpful, those who have chronically suffered from afflications such as migraines will probably gathered similar information from other sources at this point. For those that have not yet undertaken research, this book can provide many insteresting and helpful revelations. A useful addition to a home medical library. ( )

I am sooo glad to have won this book. My husband has suffered from migraines his whole life. It hurts me to see this strong man in pain. We've found some leads on some new meds that hopefully will help.

That said, I found the book itself to be well done, though not extremely in-depth. I'd say it's a very concise overview with lots of information that can be researched about in-depth. She starts out with common risk factors of headaches - family history, stress, poor posture (this might be my issue - not sitting right at work!), low vitamin D, obesity and smoking. Another chapter covers your diet - do you get headaches after eating certain foods - keep track. Allergies might also contribute. The next chapter covers different therapies besides medication that can help - acupuncture, botanical, biofeedback, chiropractic, exercise, massage.

The headache chapters cover tension, migraine, children, women, daily chronic, ice pick, and cluster headaches. Each chapter covers the symptoms, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of that type of headache.

The author also also covers what she calls dangerous headaches - how to recognize these dangerous headaches caused by strokes, aneurysms, bleeding in the brain, bacterial meningitis and brain tumors. Again, she gives symptoms and treatments for these. Very useful information to have.

All very helpful information and it will help you narrow down what type of headaches you get. At the very least, it will give you some new avenues to explore with your doctor. ( )