About 7 million adults in the United States suffer from headaches at least every other day, accounting for millions of days of missed work or reduced job efficiency. This study also determined that frequent headache is more prevalent among women (5%) than men (2.8%), among Caucasians (4.4%) than African-Americans (3.3%), and among people who have less than a high school education. Although frequent headache is more common among women than men, the difference is not as pronounced as it is with migraine headaches, which affect women at a much higher rate than men. This study was the first in the United States to describe the prevalence and characteristics of frequent headache in the general population.

Headache 1998;38:497-506.

COMMENT: It is amazing that headaches are so common. I have been very impressed with how effective dietary changes are at improving headaches. It is very rare when changing one’s diet to that described in "The Basics" on my web page does not result in a significant improvement both in the frequency and intensity of the headache. Food allergies seem to be the single most common cause of headaches. The other impressive aspect of treatment is that nearly all people tend to easily forget how disabled they were with the pain. When I question patients in their follow-up examination, they frequently forgot that their pain was so disabling and how much better they feel since they changed their diet. I am not certain what this is related to, but it is quite common.