Ali Sulteneh and the controversial cure for tension headaches

What does a tension headache feel like? A tension headache feels like an inner muscle constipation in the head. There is this soreness that you can feel to the muscles that are within the head. And somehow, you wish that the muscles would just learn to relax itself and get that sensation to go away. I am trying my best not to focus too much on the sensation and to learn how to get along in life even if it might not go away. But I would have to say that that is as much a challenge for me for I have a mind that tends towards being overconcerned about such sensations. The focus on the sensation can pretty much suck up all the mental resource I have to focus on anything else. In computer geekspeak, it is like a virus that infects a computer, draining all available memory space from the system and causing the system to lag. In my case, the computer system is my brain’s mental energy, and the tension headache like the virus that is demanding all the brain’s mental energy that it can’t function effectively for other mental processes.

So I suppose as with any other problems or issues that one might face in life, a multi-prong approach might be the best way to deal with the problem. Firstly, I am trying to find a cure for my tension headache. Secondly, I am trying to prepare myself to be able to get along with my life even if I have to live with the tension headache.

I was looking up for an online community on the internet which would feature people dealing with the same problem as I am, and to find if they have any solution to it, or methods of coping with the problem. I was thinking that facebook would be a good resource to find an online community. There is this group about such issues as tension headaches and neuralgia that is started by this guy by the name of Ali Sulteneh. He is supposedly a neurosurgeon from Syria, and he claims to have found a cure to these medical conditions. What further caught my attention in the site mentioned is that he alleges how his cure has been stolen by these other doctors who have not given him credit for his work. And he goes onto youtube videos featuring these other doctors speaking about this method for curing headaches and ranting about how these other doctors are thieves.

Apparently, he has created a commotion amongst the headache community with his rant, spilling diatribes against all sort of people he perceives as oppressing him. A blogger who writes about the happenings in the community for migraine sufferers writes in her blog post how Ali Sulteneh had harassed her friend who manages a migraine community website. Her response to Ali Sulteneh is that he should seek legal help if indeed he has been unfairly appropriated of his work as his current manner of haranguing people does not help him at all. Which I thought is a good advice that Ali Sulteneh should be following.

Brushing these disputes that I have come across, I am actually interested in these supposed breakthrough cures for tension headache. There is this youtube video by one of such doctors that Ali Sulteneh has accused of being a thief. His name is Elliot Shevel, a South African specialist surgeon. In that video, Shevel talks about how he observes that patients with tension headaches report relief from their tension headache when they went for a plastic surgery operation which is totally unconnected to their intention for treatment of their tension headaches. He concludes that the plastic surgery operation touched upon certain arteries that are responsible for the tension headaches. The surgical cure that he develops borrows from his observation of these cases in plastic surgery in order to treat migraines. He says that by a simple surgical procedure of “cauterization” of the arteries, the tension headache can be relieved. And the bonus here is that the surgery is a minimally invasive one.

According to a WebMD article however, the technique is controversial. Foremost, the theory of how a tension headache is controversial. Ali Sulteneh’s theory is that arteries outside the skull, known as extracranial arteries, are responsible for these headaches. However, in that article, the author cites the opinion of another migraine expert named Seymour Diamond, MD, who says that Ali Sulteneh’s surgery is not any more effective that the host of other surgical approaches that have been tried over the years.

"We have learned in recent years that migraines occur in the deep blood vessels that surround the brain and within the brain, not on the superficial scalp arteries that [Sultaneh] is talking about," Diamond says. "This dubious surgical approach just doesn't match what we know happens with these headaches."

I guess I am pretty much at square one regarding my search for a solution to my tension headache problem.