I am a woman and have had classic episodic headaches since I was 18 or so. I am now 50 and going through hormone changes. I now have been getting the headaches on and off for about 6 months. They still come at about 1 am or if I have a drink or chocolate, but they don't seem to have the pattern and come randomly. Is this common to some women when they begin menopause? Oxygen still stops them but I am concerned that something else may be happening. Has anyone else heard of this? Any input on this subject would be helpful.

J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2006 Jan 11  


Cluster headache in women - relation with menstruation, use of oral contraceptives, pregnancy and menopause.

van Vliet JA, Favier I, Helmerhorst FM, Haan J, Ferrari MD.

Medical Centre Haaglanden, Netherlands.

Abstract In contrast to migraine, little is known about the relationship between cluster headache and menstrual cycle, oral contraceptives, pregnancy and menopause. We performed a population-based questionnaire study among 224 female cluster headache patients, and studied the possible effect of hormonal influences on cluster headache attacks. For control data, a similar but adjusted questionnaire was sent to healthy volunteers and migraine patients. We found that menstruation, use of oral contraceptives, pregnancy and menopause had a much smaller influence on cluster headache attacks than in migraine. Cluster headache can, however, have a large impact on individual women, for example to refrain from having children.

PMID: 16407458  
==============
J Headache Pain. 2005 Feb;6(1):3-9. Epub 2005 Jan 25.

Chronic cluster headache: a review.

Favier I, Haan J, Ferrari MD.

Department of Neurology, K5-Q Leiden University Medical Centre, 9600, 2300 RC Leiden, The Netherlands.

Cluster headache (CH) is a rare but severe headache disorder characterised by repeated unilateral head pain attacks accompanied by ipsilateral autonomic features. In episodic CH, there are periods of headache attacks with pain-free intervals of weeks, months or years in between. A minority of patients have the chronic form, without pain-free intervals between the headache attacks. Chronic CH can occur as primary or secondary chronic CH; the rarest form is episodic CH arising from chronic CH. In this article, we give a review of the chronic forms of CH and focus on demographics, clinical manifestations, social habits, predictive factors, head injury, genetics, neuroimaging and therapy. IT IS REMARKABLE THAT LITTLE IS KNOWN ABOUT RISK FACTORS THAT MAKE CH CHRONIC.

Publication Types:
Review

PMID: 16362185 [PubMed]  

Hi,

First, the beast morphs...it's not unusual...

27 yrs ago, when it started for me, it was only tooth pain,

by the second yr, every hit (3-4/day) was an 8-9 kip, this went on for yrs in an episodic pattern of every 6-8 weeks

one year, about 7 years ago, it became "ice pick" headaches...0 to 10 to 0 in only a couple of minutes, several times per day...I actually got used to that...it's amazing what you can put up with when you know the pattern

6 yrs ago I had my one and only lengthy pf period of 18 months

3 years ago, I became chronic...the good part...I rarely go beyond a 6-7 (though the older I get the less resilient I've become), and O2 works most times (Zomig NS for the breakthrough hits)

Second, with all that said, if YOUR pattern perceptably changes...get thee to your Doc...it could be something else that needs to be ruled out

Third, welcome aboard...per Helen "no passengers here, we're all crew"

Best,

Jon

nice of the women here to again step up to the plate with female questions. I have had cluster ha not migrains , unless you baleive there is a small blurred line there. I was 15 when clusters started and i have yet to end a cycle till I finish a periode , seems to me yes hormones play a small role in clusters.

These clusters are very weird.  I think I'm going back chronic I have had mine for 4 months now.