As an electrical engineer, one of the technical journals I subscribe to is the IEEE Spectrum Magazine.  I am a bit behind in my reading, so I was getting caught up in the gym today, and was surprised to read about Cluster Headache in the June edition.

The June edition was all about the latest advances in medical electronics research.  Here's a link to the article in case you are interested:

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Thanks for sharing, interesting article!

Mark,

Hi Mark,

GammaCore ...been using it as an abortive, together with oxygen since 2012.

Works well but expensive if you are self paying.

There are loads more articles out there about it. Worth reading.

Peter.

Thanks Peter.  Also interesting reading.

I am convinced that the vagus nerve is part of this issue because my husband developed atrial fibrillation after his last killer stretch of CH. His atrial fibrillation is not related to cardiac issues and seems to be vagally mediated.

Preventative use reduced mean attack frequency from 4.5 attacks every 24 hours to 2.6 after treatment

A twelve-month open-label study in the March issue of the journal Neurology, reports that electroCore’s non-invasive Vagus Nerve stimulation (nVNS) device, gammaCore, is practical and effective as an acute and preventative treatment in cluster headache. Seventy-nine percent of patients who completed the trial (15 out of 19) reported an overall improvement in their condition.

The study into cluster headache, which is considered to be one of the most painful conditions known to medical science, was led by Professor Peter Goadsby and was conducted at the Royal Free Hospital in London and the Beaumont Hospital in Dublin.

Of the 25 patients enrolled 19 patients completed the study; 11 of whom had chronic cluster headache, and eight were classified as episodic. Seven of the chronic cluster patients were drug refractory – having previously failed to respond to at least five different preventative agents. Of all acute attacks treated, 47% were aborted within an average of 11 minutes. Ten patients reduced their acute use of high flow oxygen by 55% with nine reducing triptan use by 48%. Preventative use of the gammaCore device resulted in a substantial reduction in estimated mean attack frequency from 4.5 attacks every twenty-four hours to 2.6 after treatment.

Professor Peter Goadsby who is lead author of the paper commented:


Cluster headache is a dreadful, extremely painful and disabling condition that can be very complex to manage. Given the unmet need for effective and safe treatments, we were excited to see the outcomes in these patients of an approach offering very considerable promise for future development.


The treatment, which is self-administered by the patient for 120 seconds at home, involves placing the small, hand-held gammaCore device on the skin of the neck over the vagus nerve. In this study, patients carried out either two or three 120-second doses of stimulation twice per day - morning and evening - while acute attacks were treated with up to six doses at the onset of the attack. Patients reported no serious adverse events.

JP Errico, founder and CEO of electroCore, commented:


The success of this pioneering study led to our large-scale randomized PREVA trial, which was presented at the International Headache meeting (EHMTIC) in September 2014. The results of that study demonstrated nearly the same efficacy in treating and preventing cluster headaches. The full results of the PREVA trial will shortly be published.

Our many clinical trials continue to show that our hand held, vagus nerve stimulation device gammaCore is effective in helping patients prevent and treat cluster headache.

gammaCore

Brief details of the actual paper can be found at:

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Quote:

Results: Fifteen patients reported an overall improvement in their condition, with 4 reporting no change, providing a mean overall estimated improvement of 48%. Of all attacks treated, 47% were aborted within an average of 11 ± 1 minutes of commencing stimulation. Ten patients reduced their acute use of high-flow oxygen by 55% with 9 reducing triptan use by 48%. Prophylactic use of the device resulted in a substantial reduction in estimated mean attack frequency from 4.5/24 hours to 2.6/24 hours (p < 0.0005) post treatment.

There is a lot of info in here.

• Half of CHs were killed in an average of 11 minutes.
  
• Whilst 11 minutes isn't great for what we can do with imitrex injections or high flow rate oxygen, a third of those in the study were refractory to drug treatment, so for them, 11 minutes is better than no abort.
  
• It is another CH abortive that can work for people, the more of these we have, the better for everyone.
  
• About half the patients cut their triptan / oxygen use by about half, although this is confusing since used correctly the abort times with these can be a lot faster. However it is not discussed what oxygen setup or triptan type was in use. It could be a non-optimal oxygen setup or imitrex tablets or similar.
  

But there are a lot of questions that the limited content available for free doesn't answer, but may be answered in the full version may be.

For now, I'll stick to using D3, but it is a possible option if what is currently effective fails to continue working...

As I said above, GammaCore is a useful abortive and I have been using it since 2012. But it is only part of my arsenal.

I have been on Batch's D3 regimen since January with good success, up to about 2 weeks ago.

Been using O2 for years with great abortive success, but it's not portable, so has its limitations.

as I say, 2 weeks ago the Beast returned, despite the D3. I retired 2 weeks ago and it was a surprisingly busy period, both coming up to the retirement date and since. Also, I was in Florence, Italy, last week and the combination of flights and heat seems to have increased my attacks. This is where my GammaCore came in very useful. It's so portable and I have never been questioned about it in Airport Security.

So it is a valuable part of my arsenal, but it's not a magic wand.

Peter.

Hey Peter, sorry to hear that the beast is at you again.
I'd say Batch would recommend that you take 5 of those 10000iu D3 softgels and let them melt in a corner of your mouth. I've done that a couple of times this spring/summer and that got rid of the shadows that were trying to move up to full blown CH. Also you could maybe try the D3 loading schedule that Batch recommends for a week or 2.
I flew a few times this summer and stayed in very hot places for quite some time and the beast barely got passed the "shadows" stage. I exposed my whole body to the strong sun for a total of 6 weeks and was aware that i was getting a lot of vitamin D through my skin so I even experimented in cutting out the D3 regimen all together when I was in south Portugal for 2 weeks in june, result was that I remained CH free  :). I was eating very good food there with lots of fresh organic vegetables and fruits and felt very healthy. I have now just returned from 2 weeks on the southernmost point of Spain -around Tarifa-and while there I also cut out the D3 regimen, again without getting any hits. Being in the sun, when you live inIreland, really ups the wellbeing and general health.
All the best and HAPPY RETIREMENT  :)
Hope you have lots of fun and enjoy the rest of the world now that you have more time to yourself. While Ireland is a beautiful place, there is a lot more to be seen than this wet island of ours.   8-)

Thierry,
Thanks a million for the good wishes. Retirement takes 40 years to come around. I won't be wasting it. We love to travel, so lots of that is planned. Rome in a few weeks. Italy is a favourite.

I tried the 50K D3 under the tongue this morning and I'm off to the Golf course shortly, so hopefully it does the trick. Tried it before and it worked for a while, fingers crossed.

Hope you're keeping well. Sounds like you hade a nice summer in the Sun.

I'll let you know later how I got on with the Beast today.

Cheers......Peter.

Hi Peter,
             All the best for your " new journey" in life, I wont call it retirement ;D

all the best

colin

Thanks Colin,

I'm calling it Phase 3.

Peter.