Headaches in Children - Tips for Relief

Headaches in Children: Tips for Relief

Neurologist Dr. Huma Sheikh gives parents everything they need to know to help their children find relief

by Steve Silvestro, MD @zendocsteve

“Headaches were like birds. Starlings. They could be perfectly calm, then a single acorn could drop and send the entire flock to the sky.”

This is by author Erika Swyler, and it caught my eye because it’s a beautiful way of describing something that anyone who’s ever had headaches knows—that the slightest movement, the slightest sound or change, could make your head explode like a flock of pounding their wings toward the sky.

It’s hard to watch your children when they’re in pain. And what makes headaches in children so heartbreaking to watch as a parent is that if you’ve ever experienced a headache yourself, you know exactly what kind of pain your child is going through.

That’s why I reached out to Dr. Huma Sheikh to help give you the info you need to know as a parent of a child with headaches. Dr. Sheikh is an assistant professor at Mount Sinai Beth Israel and was previously a clinical instructor of neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital-Harvard Medical School. She completed her neurology residency at Montefiore Medical Center, where she also completed a Stroke Fellowship before going on to Brigham and Women’s Hospital for a fellowship in Headache Medicine. She is the co-chair of the Migraine and Vascular Disease special interest section at the American Headache Society.

In short, she’s the go-to expert on headaches.