Tom Zeller Jr. > Quotes

“It’s a peculiar thing, after all, to have a condition so painful and debilitating share a name with something so ho-hum and unremarkable that virtually everyone on Earth can say they’ve experienced it.”
― Tom Zeller Jr., The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction—and a Search for Relief: Chronic Head Pain, the Mystery of Its Origins, and the Search for Effective Relief

“But this implication of malingering—one that we half believe ourselves—is what makes the headache odyssey, and really any passage with chronic or recurring pain, a frequently lonely one.”
― Tom Zeller Jr., The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction—and a Search for Relief: Chronic Head Pain, the Mystery of Its Origins, and the Search for Effective Relief

“there is still no good evidence21 that blood vessel dilation—in the head or anywhere else—is a necessary or even sufficient condition for the experience of primary headache pain.”
― Tom Zeller Jr., The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction—and a Search for Relief: Chronic Head Pain, the Mystery of Its Origins, and the Search for Effective Relief

“megrim,” which was common at the time, and whose meaning was somewhat more varied—analogous in some instances with migraine, but also incorporating notions of vertigo, low spirits, and even flights of fancy and caprice.”
― Tom Zeller Jr., The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction—and a Search for Relief: Chronic Head Pain, the Mystery of Its Origins, and the Search for Effective Relief

“they all have a rich array of neurobiological symptoms, but they are all headaches. Attach to a disease a word so diffuse and nonspecific, and you’ve likely established a permanent beachhead for social misunderstanding.”
― Tom Zeller Jr., The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction—and a Search for Relief: Chronic Head Pain, the Mystery of Its Origins, and the Search for Effective Relief

“The word slips easily into idiomatic veins that signal a mere annoyance, an inconvenience, a catalyst for excuse making. In the cultural kiln where popular wisdom and scientific curiosity are forged, this linguistic alchemy transforms a neurobiological disease into the sniffles.”
― Tom Zeller Jr., The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction—and a Search for Relief: Chronic Head Pain, the Mystery of Its Origins, and the Search for Effective Relief

“Critical Care Pain Observation Tool,”
― Tom Zeller Jr., The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction—and a Search for Relief: Chronic Head Pain, the Mystery of Its Origins, and the Search for Effective Relief

“Australasia,”
― Tom Zeller Jr., The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction—and a Search for Relief: Chronic Head Pain, the Mystery of Its Origins, and the Search for Effective Relief

“Whatever pain achieves,13 it achieves in part through its unsharability, and it ensures this unsharability through its resistance to language,”
― Tom Zeller Jr., The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction—and a Search for Relief: Chronic Head Pain, the Mystery of Its Origins, and the Search for Effective Relief

“head pain artificially induced by exposure to histamine—a neurotransmitter long known to trigger migraines in some people.”
― Tom Zeller Jr., The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction—and a Search for Relief: Chronic Head Pain, the Mystery of Its Origins, and the Search for Effective Relief