Hey you guys...
I'm new here and new with CH diagnose...
My first experience was like two years ago but the doctors thought that i have a simple migraine.
It came back 3 weeks ago and stayed in my head till now..
My last attack was yesterday  :'(
I know there's no pill that might help me but may be some altrnative medicine that might help?

About me, i'm 30 years old, single, my name is Anna and i'm from Israel...

It really good to know that there's a cluster family to talk to  [smiley=hiya.gif]

Hello clusterica

glad you found us but sorry you had to
I've only had one cycle so far so I'm new to this too.
For now the best thing you can try is drinking a can of red bull or something similar at the start of an attack, it must have caffeine and turin in it, it can stop mild attacks and at least ease a bad one.

The only drug that I have had any success with is indictable Imtrex (sumatriptan) which works in about 5 minutes.

best advice is to try and find a head ache specialist , read all you can here.

some one with more experience will be along soon I'm sure and they will tell you to read the OXYGEN link to the left , it works well for most here , although I have not tried it yet.

best of luck taming the beast

Nigel

Welcome Anna

Was it your Doc who offered the diagnosis or was itself diagnosis like many on this board? If it was your doctor why hasn't he offered you any medication? There are many methods of dealing with Ch's today.

Get yourself over to the medications and treatments section of this site and read all you can about preventatives and abortive medications. In the mean time many people on this board have success drinking a red bull immediately on the onset of an attack. I can sometimes stop an attack from developing by jumping on a cross trainer and exercising vigorously for 10 mins although beware because exercise can be a trigger for others. Definitely look into 02 it's a life saver for most of us.

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Lefty

I'd be surprised if you do not have access to a headache specialist. This is our first choice because so many general neurologists have such limted training in complex headache disorders.

Read this entire article and the PDF file, below, as a way of gaining some perspective.
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Cluster headache.
From: START PRINTPAGEMultimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!!  You need to or END PRINTPAGE (Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases)
[Easy to read; one of the better overview articles I've seen. Suggest printing the full length article--link, line above--if you are serious about keeping a good medical library on the subject.]

Leroux E, Ducros A.

ABSTRACT: Cluster headache (CH) is a primary headache disease characterized by recurrent short-lasting attacks (15 to 180 minutes) of excruciating unilateral periorbital pain accompanied by ipsilateral autonomic signs (lacrimation, nasal congestion, ptosis, miosis, lid edema, redness of the eye). It affects young adults, predominantly males. Prevalence is estimated at 0.5-1.0/1,000. CH has a circannual and circadian periodicity, attacks being clustered (hence the name) in bouts that can occur during specific months of the year. ALCOHOL IS THE ONLY DIETARY TRIGGER OF CH, STRONG ODORS (MAINLY SOLVENTS AND CIGARETTE SMOKE) AND NAPPING MAY ALSO TRIGGER CH ATTACKS. During bouts, attacks may happen at precise hours, especially during the night. During the attacks, patients tend to be restless. CH may be episodic or chronic, depending on the presence of remission periods. CH IS ASSOCIATED WITH TRIGEMINOVASCULAR ACTIVATION AND NEUROENDOCRINE AND VEGETATIVE DISTURBANCES, HOWEVER, THE PRECISE CAUSATIVE MECHANISMS REMAIN UNKNOWN. Involvement of the hypothalamus (a structure regulating endocrine function and sleep-wake rhythms) has been confirmed, explaining, at least in part, the cyclic aspects of CH. The disease is familial in about 10% of cases. Genetic factors play a role in CH susceptibility, and a causative role has been suggested for the hypocretin receptor gene. Diagnosis is clinical. Differential diagnoses include other primary headache diseases such as migraine, paroxysmal hemicrania and SUNCT syndrome. At present, there is no curative treatment. There are efficient treatments to shorten the painful attacks (acute treatments) and to reduce the number of daily attacks (prophylactic treatments). Acute treatment is based on subcutaneous administration of sumatriptan and high-flow oxygen. Verapamil, lithium, methysergide, prednisone, greater occipital nerve blocks and topiramate may be used for prophylaxis. In refractory cases, deep-brain stimulation of the hypothalamus and greater occipital nerve stimulators have been tried in experimental settings.THE DISEASE COURSE OVER A LIFETIME IS UNPREDICTABLE. Some patients have only one period of attacks, while in others the disease evolves from episodic to chronic form.

PMID: 18651939 [PubMed]
=========

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Welcome to the board Rica! You've been given some good advice and some great reading. Go to Clusterbusters.com for some interesting research into some alternative therapies being investigated.

But first and foremost, get to a headache specialist, there are hundreds of headache types, even combinations of several types, that's why a specialist is so critical to making sure you can develop a decent regimen to deal with them.

Joe

answers:

first of all one of the head specialist (in er that i was taking while i had the most hard attack) told me that it looks like CH. there was two doctors in er: head specialist and neurologist but they weren't so sure 'coz of the male statistics. and  then i went to another doctor that told me the same and then i read here about the symptoms it was the same as i have.

about medications... my doc told me that there's no medication or pain reliefs but he gave me:
INDOVIS
INDOMETHACINE 25mg 3 times a day..
but i don't think its helpful, even though today i think was the first day without attacks in a past 3 weeks.

i read about red bull and i gave it a try couple of days ago and i think it helped me and i also found helpful hot compresses and i mean extremely hot!

in the next couple of day we're on holidays here (memorial day and independence day) so i guess I'll start looking for another head specialist on wednesday..

by the way the clusterbusters is under constructions or something like that..

and one more thing.. what do you know or think about alternative medicine? i mean yoga, reflexology etc.

till then, NO PAIN (i hope so!)

AND THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR ANSWERS! you don't know how much it means to me to know that i have people that understand my pain   :-*

Anna

Hi Anna,

Although people have reported some positive effects of several alternative and non-medicated treatments on CH, my recommendation is to not expect too much from most of them.

Osteopathy, acupuncture, deep-breathing exercises and other therapies can in cases be helpful as supplementary treatments but have not proven to be silver bullets for most.

At the moment, it seems that, the core treatment strategy for CH still revolves around medication (with O2 being the abortive of choice). Notwithstanding, taking a holistic approach to supplement your treatment can certainly be helpful.

Non-chemical preventative medication with which quite a few here have had success include Kudzu and Melatonin. The latter is particularly relevant for better managing nighttime hits.

Hi Anna,
A current survey shows 30% of CH sufferers are female. The Dr's you saw are using outdated and incorrect information.

Read around this site and you will soon know what proper treatments are for CH.

Welcome to CH.com,  Don

clusterica wrote on Apr 18^th, 2010 at 4:07pm:

..... my doc told me that there's no medication or pain reliefs.....

Doctors are generally ignorant a-holes when it come s to CH, but yours have really taken it to the extreme, both regarding medications and hesitation to diagnose you because you're female. That is just  unconscionable.

There are several very effective conventional medicine ways to abort CH attacks, including O2, imitrex injections or inhaler, Zyprexa, etc.

As far as alternative medicine is concerned, I'm a fan of accpuncture ec. over conventional medicine for a lot of chronic conditions, but I haven't found it to be useful for CH really, and haven't seen much in the way of encouraging reports about it here.

There is a very powerful plant based medicine approach though. Sorry you found clusterbusters.com to be down when you went there - here's a very good introduction to that realm from a major mainstream US news magazine "Newsweek":

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