If you suffer from cluster headaches, or live with someone who does, you need help. It is a rare condition many doctors have never treated.
Patients seeking help from doctors who are inexperienced with the condition may become frustrated, especially if treatments are ineffective and/or have side-effects.
The pain of cluster headaches is unimaginable for most people. They are only called “cluster headaches” because they come in clusters—they are unofficially known as “suicide headaches.” This unfortunate label is not to give anyone any ideas, but to extend the most enormous amount of empathy possible. It is important to understand cluster headache sufferers. These are not regular headaches. Cluster headaches cause people to question their lives; the label is an acknowledgement that these headaches are that bad … and there is just so much pain a person can handle.
This is a condition that hammers home the need for patients to be proactive about their own treatment. Because many doctors are not familiar with this condition, taking whatever they recommend may not be the best approach. You might find a doctor who eventually recommends a treatment plan that works for you, but it may come only after much waiting and experimentation. So don’t be afraid to do your own research––reach out to other cluster headache sufferers to find out remedies that are known to work.
There are a number of preventative drug therapies that can be described—not prescriptions specifically indicated for cluster headaches—anti-epileptic and mood stabilizing medications, for example, are used for the treatment of cluster headaches. Others find relief from the natural supplement, melatonin.
In addition to taking preventative medications, cluster headache sufferers should be aware of what could trigger an attack. Inhaling smoke, for example, can trigger a cluster headache, even if the headache sufferer is a smoker!
Since preventative treatments and avoiding triggers can only go so far, cluster headache sufferers also need one or more reliable methods of dealing with the pain. Some of these remedies are so toxic, they cannot be used for extended periods of time (that cluster headaches might last). This is why it is useful to have several methods.
The safest method—a nontoxic method with no side-effects—for short-circuiting a cluster headache is high-flow oxygen. In a controlled study, nearly 80% of attacks were stopped within 15 minutes.