"Required reading for anyone with a head."—Mary Roach New York Times bestselling author of
Stiff and Fuzz "Absorbing incisive. . . Zeller captures the profound human and scientific
costs of medicine's neglect of these common conditions that affect millions of
people—especially women—and points the way toward a more hopeful future."—Maya Dusenbery
author of Doing Harm From blinding migraines to severe headache disorders known as “clusters ”
chronic head pain affects 40% of the population many of them suffering in silence. Finally
The Headache reveals the science behind a group of disorders that is as much a curse as a
cultural punchline and leads to key insights into the nature of pain itself. Guided by his own
decades-long struggle with cluster headaches veteran science journalist Tom Zeller Jr.’s
journey into headache science is at once intimate and panoramic. He visits cutting-edge clinics
interviews dozens of doctors neurologists and fellow headache patients participates in
clinical trials for multi-million-dollar new medicines and even experiments with psilocybin in
search of relief. Along the way Zeller traces the longer arc of mystery around headaches
from prehistoric skull surgery to Virginia Woolf’s assertion that in the throes of a migraine
“language runs dry ” to reveal how headaches became one of the most under-researched
afflictions in medicine—and how that is slowly starting to change. With warmth wit and
infectious curiosity Zeller’s search for the origins of his own headaches becomes a journey
into the inner workings of the human nervous system and an invaluable witness to one of the
most maligned conditions known to medicine.
