Posted by gary (209.187.113.90) on February 12, 2000 at 12:14:47:
hi monique & everyone else
it's nice to see you trying to check on everything monique
I'm gonna play it a bit conservative here,
but i sincerely believe what i say is VERY well grounded in the collective experience of the vast majority of clusterheads who have "made the rounds"
there are primarily 2 approaches to dealing with CH:
attempts to prevent the attacks from occuring at all
technically called prophylactic treatment
attempts to stop or relieve the individual attacks when they occur, called abortive treatment
there are probably 1000 things that SOMEBODY (including a lot here on CHMB) will try to sell you or talk you into to for both, as far as meds or physical treatment goes - and about 995 of them DON'T help consistently
and one caution-
CH is extremely variable, even within the individual case, so before you raise your hopes & set yourself up for yet another heartbreak - when somebody says "this works for me" - be skeptical UNTIL you "hear" a LOT of us agreeing-
many people are of the nature to enthusiastically grasp at anything that looks or seems to be promising,
but without solid evidence to back it up
this is OK for them if their personalities are built that way and they can take the constant disappointment,
BUT it is irresponsible to pass those individual "maybes" on as general conclusions
also, there are always several people active on CHMB who DON'T have or deal with CH, and - often with the best intentions - "foul the water" with info that MIGHT apply to 'regular headaches" or migraines, but is BS re: CH
with CH, it's a lot easier to ask WHAT WORKS ?
(remembering that NOTHING works all the time, for everybody)
these things seem to work MOST of the time,
as far as meds and/or for MOST who try them, and they too have their drawbacks, but can be coped with:
pure high flow oxygen
imitrex
that's about it
what can I say
there's a LOT of basically behaviorally driven stuff that can help get through the attacks, or help manage the clusterhead existence more constructively, but so far -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
as far as preventive treatment goes, it's even more confusing - there are a very few drugs that a bunch of people are trying and some say make it better------
that discussion slips a lot into philosophy though, because it all depends on how much of a reduction one expects to see before calling a drug effective
AND
there is even MORE variation in individual cases as far as the cluster schedule goes than there is in the day to day attack schedules, so a LOT of people confus the effect of meds with "normal" changes in cluster pattern anyway
so -
no happy magic bullt answer,
but I believe SOLID info
which is always the place to start