Muggles with migraines can relate to Harry's ills
By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay
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Unlike Harry Potter, most Muggle children aren't charged with saving the world by fighting the evil Lord Voldemort.
But a surprising number of Muggles (nonwizards) do have something in common with their wizard hero: They suffer from migraine headaches.
According to research in the new issue of the journal Headache, one in 20 Muggle children and teens suffers from migraines — many of them, like Harry's, undiagnosed.
To raise awareness of this other evil, the American and British authors of the study decided to compare Harry's symptoms with what is known about Muggle migraines.
The Harry Potter books abound with descriptions that Muggle migraine sufferers will relate to:
Harry was 11 when his headaches started. More than half of the 28 million Americans who suffer from these debilitating headaches start getting them as children or teens.
Hallie Thomas, a 17-year-old high school graduate from Monroe, Conn., was the senior author on the research. She is a Harry Potter fan and also a migraine sufferer.
For the study, she re-read all six Harry Potter volumes published to date, highlighting the passages where he had a headache.
Those were passed on to the study's other two authors: Dr. Fred Sheftell, director of the New England Center for Headache and president-elect of the American Headache Society, and Timothy J. Steiner, a headache specialist at Imperial College of London and chairman of the World Health Organization's Global Campaign to Reduce the Burden of Headache Worldwide.
They then tried to match the references to the description of migraine in the International Classification of Headache Disorders, 2nd edition.
In fact, Harry's horrible headaches meet all but one of the ICHD-II criteria for migraine. They include pain, often but not always on one side of the head (Harry's headaches originate in the lightning-shaped scar on the side of his forehead); nausea and vomiting (see book reference above to retching); and disabling pain (see reference to wand slipping).
The only criterion Harry doesn't meet is the duration of the headache. Harry's headaches usually last only a few minutes, while Muggle migraines can endure for hours.
But wizards recuperate quickly from illness and injury, the study authors pointed out.
According to the study authors, children and teens with frequent headaches should first be seen by their primary-care physician (Harry saw Madame Pomfrey in the Hogwarts infirmary). If their headaches persist, they should be seen by a specialist.
Treatment programs don't have to include medication and can rely instead on stress management, getting proper sleep and exercise and avoiding triggers.
In Muggledom, triggers can include stress, a change in weather or certain foods.
But Harry's main trigger is He Who Must Not Be Named. Curing Harry's migraines would involve eliminating his arch nemesis.
And that remains to be seen: The final book in the J.K. Rowlings series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," comes out on July 21.
