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Gordon J. Gilbert, MD
St Petersburg, Fla

JAMA. 1982;248(8):921.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

The question by Dr Wagshul (1982;247:1883) regarding a patient in whom early morning bilateral headaches develop only if he returns to sleep after awakening, and the excellent answer by Dr Donald Dalessio calls to mind another explanation for early morning headaches, as first reported in THE JOURNAL ten years ago as "turtle headache."¹ Turtle headache occurs on awakening, characteristically in a patient who, desiring to return to sleep and finding the daylight a nuisance, pulls the bed covers over his head or retracts his head beneath the blankets. On awakening for the second time, he has bilateral, often generalized, headache, which is probably of the hypoxic type.²

It is typical of turtle headache that it occurs only under the circumstances described by Dr Wagshul: Headache develops only if the patient returns to sleep after having awakened. Specific questioning might disclose the turtle habit. It has . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Footnotes
Edited by John D. Archer, MD, Senior Editor.

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