Hi, I am new to this forum but i would like to help all who suffer from these horrible life diminishing headaches with the knowledge I have accrued. First off I would like to start off but telling a little of my backstory. As the topic states i have suffered with this affliction on and off for 20 years and this past bout with them has been the worst. They started when I was 13 at this time cluster headaches were all but unknown in the medical world. Mine were on the right side of my head (non dipolar I think is what they call it) and would last anywhere from 10 minutes to over 3 hours. I believe it was caused by a incident that happined when I was 12, I was bulldoged by a bully on a concrete basketball court and my head/neck hit the concrete first. Sense then I've been on too many medications to list (including verapimil) and none truly helped. I also tried ancient indian and tibetan healing techniques. I firmly believe that the mind can heal the body better than any medicine in most cases but it just needs to know where to look. You see your pain may appear to be in your head or neck but be caused by something in a different spot, similar to phantom pain.

Now to the point I believe I may have found where my clusters are coming from. I would like to know if this helps anyone else so please let me know. I just found this out today so thats why I said "I may have". I thought I had neck problems or cancer or you name it but I found that I had a nerve being pinched in my neck(the optithalic I belive its called) and I do. But whats causing it to be pinched is whats interesting. It's the inflamation of the M. Sternocleidomastoideus muscle in my neck. I was always working on the back of my neck, rubbing it, hitting it , putting icepacks on it but today i rubbed(and what I mean is pushed as hard as i could stand it) right above my clavicle about a half an inch from center on the right side(cause thats the side I get MY headaches on, if you get them on the left try the left) and a half and inch up and boom mine went away, and by the way ive been suffering with this non stop for four days! Also after rubbing I used an icepack on it and it seemed to help. Please try this and let me know if any of you feel relief.

Kevin, there may be multiple triggers for any individual, causing the hypothalamus to do whatever it does that causes CHs, and the idea of head/neck trauma earlier in life has been bounced around here a lot. For some, there is an identifiable moment when such trauma occurred with onset shortly after. For others, no. So many of us have tried the massage/acupressure/acupuncture whatever therapy to no avail. If it helps then great! I'm glad you are getting some relief. God bless. lance

I'm as shocked as you. I have been to massage/chiropractor as well and recieved no relief. But for some reason this seems to have worked for me, I'm still cluster free as of this post.

cervicogenic headache vs cluster headache?