Moore - Thoughts on Migraines

We recently found ourselves in the hospital with our son three times in one week for severe migraines. This got me thinking about “what the heck is a migraine really?”. I am sure that, like me, most people have experience the usual pressure headache typically thought to have been brought on by stress, tension or even a long night of imbibing. I found myself thinking “what is he complaining about…” or “he is faking it…” or even “suck it up, take some Aleve and get back to school…”. Further, I thought of a migraine as just a really bad headache… Well, I have found that I could not have been more wrong. In the following ramblings, I will attempt to define what a headache is and how it compares to a migraine

The Common Headache (aka “Cephalgia”)

My first stop was over to Wikipedia where they define a headache as:

Pain anywhere in the region of the head or neck. It can be a symptom of a number of different conditions of the head and neck.

A couple of facts that I was not aware of:

  • The brain tissue itself is not sensitive to pain because it lacks pain receptors.
  • There are 9 pain sensitive areas that have been shown to bring on headaches
  1. Muscles
  2. Nerves
  3. Arteries
  4. Veins
  5. Subcutaneous tissues
  6. Eyes
  7. Ears
  8. Sinuses
  9. Mucous membranes

Causes of Headaches

From my research it appears that there are over 200 types of headaches and more are being found as research continues in this area. Headaches are broken down into Primary and Secondary groups.

Primary

This is the most common form of headaches and this is where the tension and migraine.

Secondary

These types are caused by pain in the head and neck. Most of these are not life threatening but some of these can kill you which is why you should not mess around with headaches if they are not normal for the person.

Headache Classifications

According to the International Headache Society a headache is a non-specific symptom, which basically means that it can have many possible triggers/causes. This present a potential problem for treating the headache as you have to get back to the root cause or trigger.

There are 5 basic classifications of headaches:

1. Vasular

  • migraine - neurologically produced (more common in women)
  • toxic - fever produced
  • cluster - severe recurrent short headaches in the eyes (more common in men)

2. Muscular

  • tension - tightening or tensing of muscles in the face and neck

3. Cervicogenic

  • cervical - brought on by awkward positioning of the neck 

4. Traction and Inflammatory

  • these are symptoms of other disorders like sinus infection and can include the other type of headaches above which could create a sort of “waterfall or snowball” effect.

Thoughts on Tagging

Working with tagging, it seems that you can get less "nested" in folder hell if you employ a system of tagging. I have been reviewing some of the tech bloggers (brett terpstra specificatlly) Brett Terpstra he is in the process of writing a book for tidbits (I believe) on this topic.

Brett has developed a simple applescript and hazel combo that based up a tagging methodology it auto files the files into folders. Mavericks and Tagging Article This seems to work very well.

 

Recharge Batteries

The other day I came across a blog post by one of my favorite goto bloggers David Sparks related to a sort of OCD workflow for using recharging batteries. This got me thinking about how much i spend on batteries.. I quickly came up with a list of where I use batters (see below). I also added up the cost that I spend on batteries and it appears that even through there is an initial outlay of cash to start this up is will pay off in the long run.

  • I created a workflow similar to the one found Recharging Workflow
  • Got this charger, tester and the Eneloop batteries and so far seem great so far. The charger is amazing.

Photo Organization/Workflow

Introduction

I have been doing a lot of thinking about how to manage my photo library. I am sitting here with over 20,000 pictures our family has gathered over the years.. Also I recently heard a story while listenting to the Mac Power Users #171

My workflow if broken down in the following groupings:

* Capture/Intake:
    - Here i will primarily use my iphone or other camera like devices.. to simply capture the pics.
* Gather:
    1. I will either use Dropbox or FileTransporter to move the pictures from my devices to "landing zone" (MacBook Pro)
    2. Create a Hazel Rule that makes sure that all the images on in one area and perhaps even rename them based on some EXIF metadata.
* Process:
* Backup:
    - Local and Online and a couple more just to be safe.
    - I am looking at configuring my macs to check the dropbox folder where pictures are and make this my landing zone.