UP FRONT ENCORE
Headache Helper Book sheds light on causes, treatments for headaches
Dr. Gary Ruoff hopes his new book, Knock Out Headaches, helps ease others’ pain. by
MARIE LEE
It wasn’t the lure of The New York Times
bestseller list that made Dr. Gary Ruoff write a book. He did it, he says, because “I feel for people in pain.” The medical director of clinical research at Westside Family Medical Center and longtime Kalamazoo physician has put his 40-plus years of experience in treating headache patients in a new book, Knock Out Headaches, published by Spry Publishing in Ann Arbor. Ruoff says the purpose of the 200-pluspage book, available locally at Michigan News Agency, Bookbug and Kazoo Books, is to educate headache sufferers so ”they can take control of their headaches.” “It advocates the idea that people with headaches can help themselves,” he explains. “I wanted to educate people about the different types of headaches and what is going on in their bodies that causes these headaches. There are a lot of processes going on that affect headaches.” As a researcher, Ruoff knew that a number of books on migraines and headaches al-
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ready existed. He read “the best five” of those books but found they were written for the clinician, not the patient. So last year, during the evenings after work, he wrote the book that he wished he had to give to his patients. “I write the way I talk to patients,” he says. “I wanted to put down all this information for those people who aren’t my patients.” In addition to educating readers about the different types of headaches, Knock Out Headaches also discusses a variety of triggers, from weather and hormones to food and environmental factors, that can cause headaches. And while the list can be rather long, Ruoff identifies what he considers the “big four” responsible for making headaches more intense and frequent: caffeine, the artificial sweetener aspartame, MSG and chocolate. “It’s a cumulative effect,” Ruoff explains. “Having a piece of chocolate every now and then may not seem iike a big deal, but if it’s combined with other triggers like drinking diet sodas and coffee and hormones, it be-
comes a big deal. Imagine it as a glass filled with water, which are your other triggers, and that piece of chocolate may be the drop that causes the glass to overflow.” It is estimated that 50 percent of headache sufferers are not under a doctor’s care and treat their headaches with over-the-counter medicines. But when the headaches start occurring three to four times in two weeks and last up to three days, it’s time to start looking at preventative care, says Ruoff. “When it begins to affect your quality of life, then it’s time to do something,” he says. The book’s first three chapters describe types of headaches, from “ice cream” and tension headaches to cluster and migraine headaches. Two chapters are devoted to “taking control” of headaches through medication as well as exercise and diet. Those chapters also look at factors such as anxiety and depression that can cause headaches. Ruoff also spends a chapter discussing the patient-doctor partnership, which he believes is critical to headache treatment.