Cluster Headaches: Causes, Tests, and Treatment Options

By Jeremy Glenn

Cluster headache (CH) is considered a rare neurological disorder which brings excruciatingly severe pain on one side of the head spreading to into the temple, neck and jaw. The pain is usually centered on the eye area and escalates very rapidly in five to ten minutes. Attacks can last between fifteen minutes and three hours and stop as quickly as it starts. Despite the fact that there is still no cure for CH, there are treatments that can help you make attacks shorter and less severe. Moreover, there are also available preventive medications that can aid in reducing the number of cluster headaches. This informative books outlines the causes, tests and treatment options for this debilitating disorder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andale LLC
• Release date: Mar 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476283791

Book preview

Cluster Headaches:

Causes, Tests and Treatment Options

Jeremy Glenn, MA, Arnold Garfield, MD (Ed.)

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Smashwords Edition

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Copyright 2012 Jeremy Glenn, MA; Arnold Garfield, MD

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

Living and fighting under the pain of Cluster Headaches

What causes Cluster Headaches?

Diagnosis

Treatment and Drugs Available

Managing CH and Alternative Medicine

Major Lifestyle Changes

Quit Guide: Quitting Smoking

Yoga

Meditation

Organizations Related To CH

Appendix A: Internet Resources / Further Reading

Appendix B: Complete Directory of Holistic Physicians Listed By State

Living and fighting under the pain of Cluster Headaches

It was dawn when he was awakened by a burning sensation in his ear and back of his neck. He can feel the pain passing through his temple, to his left eye and behind his ear. The pain seems to divide his skull into two like a chainsaw cutting a log. The pain started to pound on his left eye so he pressed his palm hard on it. He feels like his eye took a strong uppercut blow and eyelids are swelling in pain. Tears are running down his cheek and his left nostril started to be stuffy and runny. He needs to get out of the bed to look for diversion. He pressed his hands harder on his temples trying to take control of the pain. Although it seems he’s almost crushing his skull, it still can’t help. He needs to get out of the room. He’s pacing like a very old man, dropping on the floor and getting up again. He’s doing it while pressing his temples. Downstairs, he’s banging his head on the hardwood floor. He wanted to scream but doesn’t want to send alarms to his family that he’s experiencing once again his nightly painful rituals. This night, he’s under an intense pain for an hour and yesterday was thirty minutes. He doesn’t know what the next hours hold for him. All he knows is that the pain is getting intense each day of an attack and he wanted death to take him right there to escape the debilitating pain.

This is just one of the thousands of painful stories of cluster headaches. You may find this situation similar with your own struggle. Just like any other victim of cluster headaches, you still don’t know when the next attack will take place. Every time the pain passes through your head like water passing through a pipe, you’d swear you want to get rid of that evil inside your skull. Even though everything else is still uncertain, there is still hope for you. Despite the helplessness that you feel, you still have the capacity to fight against the disease.

Overview

It was in 1926 when a London neurologist named Wilfred Harris first described a disease with a prominent feature of an intense degree of pain in the head. He first introduced the complete description of Cluster Headaches which he named as Migrainous neuralgia. The disease had a number of names in the past including Ciliary neuralgia, Histaminic cephalalgia, Vidian neuralgia and Sluder’s neuralgia. It also got the name Horton’s headache, from an American neurologist, Bayard T. Horton.

Cluster headache (CH) is considered a rare neurological disorder which brings excruciatingly severe pain on one side of the head spreading to into the temple, neck and jaw. The pain is usually centered on the eye area and escalates very rapidly in five to ten minutes. Attacks can last between fifteen minutes and three hours and stop as quickly as it starts. The pain usually affects one side of the head that is accompanied by physical reactions occurring on the same side of the pain. Attacks involve tearing of the eyes and a runny, stuffy nose, drooping eyelids and sweating on the forehead and face. This can occur regularly for one week to one year with attacks of once every other day to eight times per day at the same time. Its occurrence is usually separated by long pain-free periods or remissions when the pain completely disappears and then recurs. During remission periods, there is no occurrence of headaches for months or even years.

The term cluster headaches is based on the behavior of its occurrence, which is in clusters. Nicknamed as suicide headache, it is also considered a young person’s disease because the headache typically starts before age thirty. It is sometimes called an alarm clock headache since it brings immense pain in cyclical patterns. It may awaken you in the middle of the night, one to two hours after going to sleep. This occurrence is thought to be linked to the biological clock or circadian rhythm. Compared to daytime attacks, these nocturnal attacks can be more immense. The pain can be more intense than that of a migraine attack

CH attacks are classified into two groups. First, the episodic attack, in which you may experience the pain in cycles or patterns such as every day for weeks, followed by several months to a year or more between cycles. Eighty to ninety percent of CH patients are under this cycle. In the second group, you get no break from suffering the chronic attack. In this group, you may suffer each day for years. Although headaches under any of the group can cause debilitating pain, these are fortunately not life-threatening. Despite the fact that there is still no cure for CH, there are treatments that can help you make attacks shorter and less severe. Moreover, there are also available preventive medications that can aid in reducing the number of cluster headaches.

What causes Cluster Headaches?

Studies and researches conducted have not yet unveiled the exact cause of cluster headaches. However, experts think that the headaches are related to the sudden release of chemical, such as histamine or serotonin.

• Mast cells release histamine when an allergen is encountered. The histamine response can produce sneezing, itching, hives and watery eyes.

• Serotonin is