advice on cluster headache????
I am 27 year old and for about 6 years i have been going through a lot of pain that effects my life.
for about 2 months of every year, i have been getting pains above my my right eye on the temple and it lasts for about 2 hrs every day. This pain is excruciating and debilitating. I cant express the pain, never have i felt anything worse then this pain. For 6 years i got prescribed many medication but none took into effect at all. Recently i went to a doctor and told him my symptoms and without running any test he diagnosed me with cluster headaches and prescribed me with medication. I went home and looked up the medication and it had nothing to do with pain at all it was for seizures. This pain is killing me I don't no what to do to prevent them or what to take when they do happen. someone please help me with what medicine i should tell the doctor to prescribe me or what i should do to prevent them, its effecting me greatly.
I would appreciate any help
Public Comments
1. O.K., I do know about the headaches that your are talking about and the interesting thing is I do have epilepsy. But I also know how to help you for I just got through getting myself out of the pain for the first time in as long as I can remember.The first exercise goes like this,
Put both hands behind your head and place your fingers on your neck muscles and press in with a moderate pressure and hold that pressure.
Now relax, take a deep breath and exhale and don't tense up any part of your body.
After 30 seconds, slowly lower your head until your neck is fully extended. Hold for another 15 seconds.
Then release the pressure but hold your head there for one minute.
Front.
Press your thumbs up under your chin near the front. The muscle there will be very hard, just press into it and hold.
Relax again.
After 30 seconds, slowly raise your head until your neck is fully extended and hold for another 15 seconds.
Then release the pressure but hold your head there for one minute.
Sides of your head:
Invert your hand and place it along side your head with your fingers by your back muscle and your thumb by your throat. Press in gently and pull fingers together trapping some skin in your grasp. Hold tight to it.
Relax. Keep looking straight ahead.
After 30 seconds, tighten the grip some more and slowly lean your head towards your other shoulder as far as you can and hold for another 10 seconds.
Then release the skin but hold your head there for one minute.
Do the other side.
If you continue to have any trouble at all let me know and I will help you in getting rid of the pains. This has been some of the superficial stuff and you might need to do a little with muscles, not much different but some. They all can be overcome, that is the important part.
2. Hi. First let me say, I also have cluster headaches, and we've found medications that work for me.
First, you have to know that there is no such thing as a medicine to treat cluster headaches. Every medication you are prescribed for this condition will say that it is primarily for something else. It could say that it's for a different kind of headache (e.g. migraine), for seizures, for blood pressure, for schitzophrenia, or for something else altogether. Not a single one of these will say that it's primary use is for cluster headaches. That's basically because nobody understands how cluster headaches work, so they don't know how to develop medicines to solve the condition.
There are two kinds of treatments for these bastardly things. The first kind is things you can take when you have a headache, to make it stop. These won't keep you from getting a headache the next day, but they will make the current headache stop quickly. The thing that works best for most cluster headache sufferers is to breathe straight oxygen for about 5 minutes. This works for me, and it is like a miracle: in just a few minutes, the headache is gone. You should try this in an emergency room or doctor's office to see if it works for you; if so, the doctor can give you a prescription for home oxygen. Make sure you get a non-rebreather mask and not just the nasal canula, which is fine for somebody who needs just a little more oxygen in their bloodstream but which doesn't deliver enough oxygen to get rid of the cluster headache in sufferers. For other people, the migraine medication Imotrex, taken as an injection, can stop or help the headache; this drug doesn't work for me. Some people find that serious prescription migraine medications like Maaxalt can help, but again, this has no effect on my headaches. Finally, and I am not advocating either of these two approaches, scientific studies have shown that in some people, putting capsiacin into your nose or under your tongue can make the headache go away, and in people studied in controlled conditions, taking "magic mushrooms" can also make the headache disappear (but obviously, this is illegal, dangerous, and will probably leave you hallucinating or something).
The second kind of treatment is preventative, to keep the headaches from coming in the first place. There are LOTS of different things that work for some people; not all of those things will work for you, I'm sure. As I said above, not a single one of them is marketed for cluster headache. The first category of this kind of treatment is drugs that are marketed as blood-pressure drugs. I have taken both Verapamil and Indomethacin in my time, and both have worked for me. You will not see these marketed as cluster headache drugs, however. I don't have high blood pressure, so my doctor actually orders me to eat more salt when I am taking drugs for my clusters! The second kind of preventative medications are drugs for seizures; many people take Topiramate with great success, and this might work for you. Finally, there are drugs for psychological problems; some people find that taking lithium makes the headaches go away, for example. This last category is problematic, however, because obviously these drugs have psychological side-effects, and the normal cluster-headache sufferer is psychologically completely normal. It's a desperate step to take the psychiatric/psychological drugs, because they can leave you a little crazy.
On the other hand, clusters can leave you crazy, too. Do you know that they are acknowledged by doctors to be the worst pain experienced by mankind, even worse than childbirth? Yeah. So you're one tough kid.
Good luck!
