From time to time we see comments about magnesium for CH. The number of mentions has fallen sharply over the last few years and I was curious about what the medical literature was revealing.

Major reviews/evaluations of meds do not mention magnesium. A broad search on PubMed produced only 3 hits covering 1991 to 2001.

The only web site that was devoted to magnesium & CH has dropped CH, still comments on use for migraine, and covers several other medical issues quite unrelated to headache.

So, while individuals may benefit from trying it, clearly there is no attention being paid to magnesium for us. Bottom line: if you're curious, try after having given the mainline treatments a fair trial.

(Written 11/10.)

Thank you Bob. 

Thanks as always for the research Bob, I'm one who takes it on and aff cycle. Convinced it's had a beneficial effect on my CH!

Joe

Disagree with you, Bob.

There is no research I am aware of that undermines earlier research findings that clusterheads as a group tend to be deficient in magnesium, or that clusterheads who are deficient in magnesium respond to magnesium supplements with fewer headaches. 

A large number of regulars here over the years have used magnesium and have reported with various degrees of certainty that their headaches decreased while on magnesium. While this is not hard science, it is consistent with the science that has been done.

The fact that the medical community has not done much research on this topic lately has no bearing on whether it actually helps or not. None what so ever. This is a rare disease, so there isn't much funding or research. Most medical researchers make their careers by getting grants. If they want a grant to test a new patented medicine for CH, they have a good chance of getting one. But if they choose to investigate something like magnesium or kudzu, they are far less likely to climb the ladder... the absence of grants leads to a systemic bias against some therapies.

It is clear to me that kudzu is quite effective for many people, and yet there is exactly one article in the medical research on this (it was a survey-based study that replicated activity on this board in a more statistically sound method).  Are there many regulars here who doubt that psilocybin or other clusterbusters are often a very good therapeutic option? Nope. Yet the medical research barely mentions that either (only two articles referenced in PubMed!). The fact that the medical community promotes or ignores a therapy is not always correlated with the actual effectiveness of the therapy.

Bottom line on magnesium IMO is that there is some evidence that it helps, it is inexpensive, and it has a safety profile that is excellent unless one goes overboard or already has kidney failure (and magnesium seems to prevent many types of kidney failure). While we don't have enough research to say exactly how many people out of 100 it will help, it seems to be an excellent year-round nutritional approach, especially for episodics who are not interested in using verapamil or other meds.

Hello,

I have been taking mag for about 45 days give or take. Right now im 6 weeks into my cycle, and that runs about 4 months.

Im not sure if it is the mag or the seeds, but this has been the mildest cycle i have ever been in. After the 1st 2 weeks.. I have only gotten 4 ch that was easy beatdown with 02.

My take is this.. I think it works. i will not stop taking it.

Coach Bill

Two & a quarter years (837) days without a high cycle since going on Magnesium tells me that I ain't gonna stop taking them.

Cheers
Barry

No disagreement intended, but merely a contrast based on my personal experience only.

That disclaimer out of the way...   ;)

I've been taking 250 mg. magnesium daily out of cycle and 500 mg. daily while in cycle for three years.  Thusfar, I have seen no effect from it whatsoever, positive or negative.

For what it's worth, of course.

Best wishes,

George

I'm glad it has helped some of us, it didn't help me and seemed to make things worse, but that could just have been a bad cycle deciding to go nuclear. If there was a connection, though, what might it be? Why would a deficiency in Mg affect CHs? Just curious. lance

Lance! Just the kind of bedtime reading we all need.
======

Brain Res Bull. 2001 Mar 1;54(4):437-41.

Deficient energy metabolism is associated with low free magnesium in the brains of patients with migraine and cluster headache.
Lodi R, Iotti S, Cortelli P, Pierangeli G, Cevoli S, Clementi V, Soriani S, Montagna P, Barbiroli B.

Dipartimento di Medicina Clinica e Biotecnologia Applicata D. Campanacci, Università di Bologna, Bologna, Italy. lodi@med.unibo.it

Abstract
We used phosphorus magnetic resonance spectroscopy to assess in vivo the brain cytosolic free magnesium concentration and the free energy released by the reaction of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) hydrolysis (DeltaG(ATPhyd)), the latter being an index of the cell's bioenergetics condition. We studied 78 patients with migraine in attack-free periods (7 with migraine stroke, 13 with migraine with prolonged aura, 37 with migraine with typical aura or basilar migraine, and 21 with migraine without aura), and 13 patients with cluster headache. In the occipital lobes of all subgroups of migraine and in cluster headache patients cytosolic free [Mg(2+)] as well as the free energy released by the reaction of ATP hydrolysis were significantly reduced. Among migraine patients, the level of free energy released by the reaction of ATP hydrolysis and the cytosolic free [Mg(2+)] showed a trend in keeping with the severity of clinical phenotype, both showing the lowest values in patients with migraine stroke and the highest in patients with migraine without aura. These results support our current hypothesis that the reduction in free [Mg(2+)] in tissues with mitochondrial dysfunction is secondary to the bioenergetics deficit, and are against a primary role of low brain cytosolic free [Mg(2+)] in causing the bioenergetics deficit in headache.

PMID: 11306197 [PubMed]

Bob Johnson wrote on Nov 10^th, 2010 at 8:36am:

These results support our current hypothesis that the reduction in free [Mg(2+)] in tissues with mitochondrial dysfunction is secondary to the bioenergetics deficit, and are against a primary role of low brain cytosolic free [Mg(2+)] in causing the bioenergetics deficit in headache.

So if I'm reading this correctly, the current hypothesis of the authors is that the low levels of free magnesium in the brain tissue of headache sufferers is a result of deficient bioenergetic reactions--not the result of a primary lack of magnesium. 

I assume then, (according to this hypothesis) that supplementing magnesium should have little if any effect.


Quote:

mitochondrial dysfunction

Well, there's the elephant in the room.

Best,

George

 

Interesting update, Bob. In the short time since I've had this stupid f*#&ing affliction, I've been doing an insane amount of research, not just into CH treatments, but also into all possible root causes. It has led me to my own (new) personal regimen, which includes relatively high doses of ZMA. I am taking it along with other supplements, so I'm not able to isolate any specific effects of the magnesium at all, but there are certainly legitimate scientific reasons why it might be helpful.

(As a side note, I did a little search on ZMA here, and found one mention of it. . .and the original poster got blasted pretty good because people thought he was trying to pimp supplements. I really wish that thread had a better outcome, because you will sleep like a big snoring baby when you take ZMA, if nothing else.) 

Bob Johnson wrote on Nov 5^th, 2010 at 10:55am:

From time to time we see comments about magnesium for CH. The number of mentions has fallen sharply over the last few years and I was curious about what the medical literature was revealing. Major reviews/evaluations of meds do not mention magnesium. A broad search on PubMed produced only 3 hits covering 1991 to 2001. The only web site that was devoted to magnesium & CH has dropped CH, still comments on use for migraine, and covers several other medical issues quite unrelated to headache. So, while individuals may benefit from trying it, clearly there is no attention being paid to magnesium for us. Bottom line: if you're curious, try after having given the mainline treatments a fair trial. (Written 11/10.)

Thanks, Bob!