英語聽力文摘 頭痛的煩惱

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Migraine or Face Pain?

偏頭痛還是臉部疼痛?

If you’ve ever had a migraine headache, you don’t need me to tell you it hurts. Doctors report that about twenty million people suffer from serious headaches, and ten percent of these have intractable pain–meaning it doesn’t go away. But here’s a surprise: the problem isn’t always a migraine. Sometimes very similar symptoms are caused by damage to a nerve of the face, which results in the nerve itself sending nonstop “ouch” signals.

What can be done?

A new treatment being tried out by a few doctors, including Dr. Robert Levy, a neurosurgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, involves zapping with electricity certain nerves that innervate the face. It’s like a marathon in which thousands of runners are crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. Someone sends up a firework nearby and for a moment all the distracted runners stop and stare. By hitting the nerves with a mild electrical jolt, you can “distract” the signal-carriers–that is, the pain signals stop crossing the nerves for as long as the electrical charge is on.

So how to do that? Levy and others have inserted a little battery under patients’ collarbones, connected it to a wire that runs under the scalp, and stuck the end directly into the misfiring nerve. Odd as it may sound at first, it works. Patients report that when the device is turned on they are pain-free, sometimes for the first time in years. This kind of nerve stimulation is still in its early days, but the results so far look very promising. For chronic headache sufferers, a little wire can make for blessed peace of mind…not pain of head.

如果你曾經(jīng)有過偏頭痛的經(jīng)歷，就不需要我告訴你那有多痛苦。醫(yī)生報告，大概有2千萬人患有嚴重頭痛，并且他們之中百分之十患有頑固性疼痛——那意味著疼痛不會消失。但醫(yī)生們有一個驚奇發(fā)現(xiàn)：問題不總是偏頭痛。有時，類似的癥狀是由臉部神經(jīng)受損引起的，受損的神經(jīng)會不間斷地疼痛信號。

我們可以做些什么呢?

有幾個醫(yī)生正試驗一種新的治療，包括羅伯特萊維博士，他是西北紀念醫(yī)院的一位神經(jīng)外科醫(yī)生，參與到用電流破壞那些刺激臉部的神經(jīng)。就像一場馬拉松，數(shù)千名奔跑的人穿越布魯克林大橋。有的人在附近放煙火，這會兒所有的跑步的人都停下來看。通過一個輕度的電力震動擊打神經(jīng)，你就可以轉移信號載波——就是說，疼痛信號停止穿越神經(jīng)，只要電荷一直處于連接狀態(tài)。

那么如何做到這一點呢?萊維和其他醫(yī)生在患者鎖骨下面插入了一個小電池，并與頭皮下的電線連接，然后把末尾插入神經(jīng)。起初也許聽起來有點奇怪，它能管用?；颊邎蟾嬲f，當設備接通時，他們感覺不到疼痛，這是多年來第一次。這種神經(jīng)刺激仍處于初期，但到目前為止的結果看起來是很有前途的。對慢性頭痛患者來說，一小節(jié)電線得到內心的平靜……而不是頭痛。