Introducing a new category of headache derived from Iranian traditional medicine

Headache is a prevalent and disabling condition that affects people in all age groups worldwide and degrades the quality of life and job performance. However, the etiology of a large group of headaches is still unclear and this have prevented efficient treatments. There are several case reports of people with headache that suffer from other medical problems as well. This was the key directed us to present an important headache group that is not classified by the International Headache Society (IHS): “The participatory headache”. In the Traditional Iranian Medicine, the participatory headache [“Sodae mosharekati”] is defined as the headache not originated from the head and neck; rather, the headache is caused by another organ dysfunction/disease. Treatment of this type of headache completely depends on the treatment of the original affected organ. Reviewing available references from Traditional Iranian Medicine on participatory headache as well as the books, papers and case reports from the conventional medicine about headaches with unknown etiology, we made a comparative study in this field that is presented. Our investigation demonstrated that there are significant evidences in the conventional medicine literature for different types of the participatory headache, as classified in traditional medicine into the following categories: 1- Headache caused by the stomach: The scientists in the field of the conventional medicine also believe that headache is a frequent feature of functional gastrointestinal disorders. 2- Headache with kidney origin: There are several reports of the cases with kidney disease which also suffer from headache. 3- Headache with liver origin: our literature review showed relationship among migraine and liver disease. 4- Bowel, bladder and uterus origin of the headache is also well documented in the patients with IBS, bladder and uterus disease. Recognizing the participatory headache as described in the traditional medicine, can help researchers to establish new criteria to improve headache diagnosis and treatment protocols.