If you are talking 10 times in volume, it isnt that much .... but 10 times circumference is extreme.

  Why can't you accept the fact that a misfiring hypothalamus is the cause of clusters?

             Potter

The trouble with unidentified infections is that they CAN be identified.  A simple white blood cell count will identify it.

I'm not going to spend energy debating you on "what if's".  Not my thing.

Jeff, not one person here is discounting that you experienced something that could be confused with CH, and was obviously painful.  But I'll assure you, if antibiotics helped, if dislodging some body from your sinus helped...I can pretty well guarantee that you did not suffer from actual cluster headaches.

There are may conditions that can mimic CH, and I'm guessing that this is what you experienced. 

Edit to add:

Quote:


Well seeing as I prefer to continue breathing, for now, I can't tell you that I "for sure" have the wonky hypothalamus.  But research has shown that this IS the one and only known common factor among us Cluster heads.  That tells me it came first.  We were born this way.

Jeff, I have no wish to dispute your conviction that a sinus issue is at the root of your particular experience with CH.  This is a complex syndrome.  Like you, I am not a doctor, and I certainly don't claim to be anything like a neurologist.       

In my own experience, however, I can only say that I have never had any sinus issues, nor have I ever been diagnosed with a sinus infection of any kind.  I've had episodic CH for 43 years, and it has always had a strong cyclic and seasonal component.

I was thoroughly convinced for many years that my cluster headaches were precipitated by some sort of malformation in my cervical vertebrae.  Turns out, however, (and I realized it after listening to some of the others here) that the "neck thing" that's invariably associated with my cycles is a relatively common side-effect of the headaches--not a cause.  Swollen nerve ganglia along the upper spinal column. 

It's the secondary effects of CH--the autonomic nervous symptoms--that make me wonder how one can ascribe CH to a sinus infection.  Watering eye.  Sweating.  Swollen nerve ganglia.  Etc.

As you know, a CH attack isn't like anything else a person can name.  It's a neuropathic event affecting the autonomic nervous system, and it feels different than anything else that might involve the nerve endings themselves, no matter how painful. 

I was recently interviewed by a newspaper reporter about CH whose primary interest was in asking me what it felt like.  As always, I had a tough time answering.  Not because other folks don't have experience with pain, but because it doesn't feel like anything else a person can point to.  There's no analogy for it. 

Bottom line, after much rambling, I suppose, is that I don't see how any conceivable sinus infection could be the root cause of the neuropathic pain associated with CH.

Best wishes,

George       

Redd - excellent, excellent post previously. I'm not a doctor, but am a 25 year registered nurse, and that was the best explanation I've read. Big kudos!

   You have a sinus headache.

          Potter

Thank  some folks coming out to play

jon019 wrote on May 23^rd, 2010 at 10:54pm:

Yet again, a surprising answer from someone who who has likely had thousands of "hits" with not one answer as to why.



Seems like that would tick you off at the medical professin not me?



Unlike you I firmly believe that medicine is a "practice".





Best,

Jon

Yet again, a surprising answer from someone who who has likely had thousands of "hits" with not one answer as to why.

Seems like that would tick you off at the medical profession not me?


Unlike you I firmly believe that medicine is a "practice".