Hello -- I'm in the middle of a cycle, and looking for relief. Unfortunately through trial and error it seems that only the bad meds provide me with any real relief, but I can't live my life on prednisone and opiates. I am on 400 mg Topomax, Verapamil, Lithium, and a bridged medical o2 tank system giving me 20 lpm (my wife is scared of the welders tank idea...).

Now I am luck enough to live in CA where Medical Marijuana is legal. I have a recommendation, and have been getting significant relief the few times I have tried.  My question for those who use on a regular basis is if the are certain strains that are better than others at relieving CH pain.  I'm sure there are. 

Thank you in advance.  Will

G'day Willy,
I'm not up to speed on your ? but if you go to ClusterBusters
on the left of this page, you should be able to get your answer
there.

Hoppy.

Welcome to the board Willy, Marijuana is a funny one for CH, for most it seems to aggravate the pain but a small minority seem to be getting relief. Do take Hoppy's advice and visit clusterbusters.com There are a lot of "alternative" treatments to CH that are producing some impressive results. Have you checked out the D-3 therapy yet?

Follow this link to the medications section of this board and read the post 

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It’s a vitamin/mineral/fish oil supplement, all over the counter stuff. It’s up to an 81% success rate of those who try it and respond to the survey so you’re just shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t give it a shot. I’m 3 years pain free on it after a 35 plus year track record with episodic CH. Best of all, it’s healthy for you even without CH!

Joe

Ditto to everything Joe said.

  Chronic since 1/01, came here 2/02 . . . have been PAIN FREE the last 18 months using the D3 regimen . . . all guaranteed triggers no longer have any effect.

  Be Safe,   PFDANs


      Richard

Weed is an instant trigger for me

I get clusters on my right side. After a hit (no pun intended) my left eye gets the classic ptosis, but my right eye appears to have been sewn shut!

I used cannabis as an abortive very effectively for 3 cycles. Then, last September, sadly realized it started making my hits worse. Maybe I didn't have the right strains. It only works if you find the right strain. BUT, when it does - better than O2 & Imitrex.

a couple of previous posts that I wrote-

Here is a pubmed article (originally in Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain Volume 49, Issue 6) entitled Cluster attacks responsive to recreational cannabis and dronabinol.

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A 19-year-old right-handed university student presented to the Montefiore Headache Center for evaluation and management of his cluster headaches. Over the past 2 years, he had a cyclical pattern of stereotyped attacks occurring predictably every 1 to 2 months, lasting approximately 2 weeks. During these 2-week cluster periods, he experienced 1 attack every other day. Each cluster period was typically followed by a remission phase lasting 1 to 2 months. However, over the past 3 months, the frequency gradually increased to 1 to 2 attacks daily.

The majority of attacks would abruptly awaken him from sleep at 12:30 am or 4:30 am with excruciating right temporal and peri-orbital pain. Each episode lasted 3 to 4 h untreated, with the pain reaching maximal intensity within 10 min and declining within 10 min at its conclusion.

He did not drink alcohol, but noted that marijuana use at the onset of his headaches consistently brought complete relief within 5 min of inhalation for each attack.

It is a small study, one person.  but you KNOW that if there is one person there has to be more (like me and all the others who have reported it to work)  If I have smoked it often, it stops working (kinda like every other drug I take for clusters).  If I get a strain that is more sedating than hallucinatory it doesn't seem to work as well either (no surprise here, hallucinogenic substances have a pretty damn good track record for busting clusters)  More than anything, I find it EXTREMELY useful for getting rid of my clusters, even tough one's if I combine it with either opiates or ketamine...opiates don't really seem to work at all for me unless I smoke with it, then it kicks it's ass.
   
    After the the number of people that I have talked to claiming that cannabis HAS worked for them, I actually recommend it now--mostly because if you are one of the lucky ones that it actually works for, you have a non-toxic remedy available for you. (no small feat in the world of cluster headache drugs) The stipulation with my recommending this, is that you should make sure that you have an imitrex shot, some O2, or some other quick acting abortive ready in case you are one of the ones that it doesn't work for.

As far as the whole blood vessel dilators are bad for clusters idea, I think that's another subject that has been beaten to death and essentially thrown out--many dilators help CH, and many constrictors make them worse.

Here's the thing I'm not getting...  Seems like we are mostly in agreement that marijuana in many many cases is very helpful for migraines.  If you are believing the vascular theory of migraine and clusters, how does this make sense?  All along the clusters and migraines have been lumped together as "vascular headaches" Are we now saying that cluster headaches go along with this theory, but not migraines?  Are cluster headaches vascular headaches, but not migraines?  Next time you have a doctor tell you about how vasodilators are bad for clusters ask if they are bad for migraines too...Then ask them why marijuana works for so many peoples migraines.

Here's a paper by Goadsby...

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"the same group using the same methods has shown that vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP), another member (with PACAP) of the secretin/glucagon peptide superfamily, can induce an equal craniovascular vasodilation but does not trigger migraine at all (Rahmann et al., 2007). So it is not the dilation but receptor site activation that is important in migraine. Simply stated, the vasodilation is an epiphenomenon neither necessary nor sufficient for the symptoms."

I would be very surprised if the same thing was not found with clusters.  One of our Clusterbuster's is actually seeing Goadsby as a patient, maybe we can see if he has the time to shed a little light on the subject.

Truthfully though, I have to admit that I see no real point in arguing either side of the vasodilator argument when talking about marijuana.  Mostly because of the Pubmed  link I posted earlier.

Does anyone out there really think that this is not cluster?  Sure sounds like cluster....

That's why I say who cares about vasodilation, we can argue back and forth till we're blue in the teeth without getting anywhere.  What we can not argue with is that some people who have been diagnosed with clusters feel that they get relief from Cannabis, including the one person in this study.  The Headache Journal of Head and Face Pain thought it was worthy enough to publish it in their journal (Volume 49, Issue 6, pages 914–916, June 2009)...

Quote:

That's why I say who cares about vasodilation, we can argue back and forth till we're blue in the teeth without getting anywhere.

I gotta say I'm right there with you, Ricardo, at least on this issue. I'm interested in what works to reduce the pain and the number of attacks. Without crossing certain red lines, of course. And those lines will be different for each of us. But who knew Vitamin D3 could play so significant a role in providing measurable relief? Who knows what else may come along? Blessings. lance

There are CB1 receptors in the hypothalamus which and cannabinoids are known to inhibit excess electrical activity in the brain (and hence used for epilepsy) and help correct neural damage. So it is pretty clear why cannabis is helpful for some CHers.   

Willly wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2013 at 1:51am:

Hello -- I'm in the middle of a cycle, and looking for relief. Unfortunately through trial and error it seems that only the bad meds provide me with any real relief, but I can't live my life on prednisone and opiates. I am on 400 mg Topomax, Verapamil, Lithium, and a bridged medical o2 tank system giving me 20 lpm (my wife is scared of the welders tank idea...). Now I am luck enough to live in CA where Medical Marijuana is legal. I have a recommendation, and have been getting significant relief the few times I have tried.  My question for those who use on a regular basis is if the are certain strains that are better than others at relieving CH pain.  I'm sure there are.  Thank you in advance.  Will

I've been told that strains high in CBD are very good for pain relief. If you can get it, try Harlequinn or Chocolope.
Sativas that have a high CBD percentage (above 1%) will be your best bet as far as pain goes.

I'm new here and thought I would chime in on this subject.  Over the last couple years I have tried all different combinations of therapies.  They have cut my number of ch down from 12-20 a week to 3-4 a week, but I can't get any lower for my occurrences. Plus I still get the full clusters with season changes where I go back to 20 a week for 3 week spans. 

I find that canabis does held prevent when I have been exposed to a trigger. But it needs to be certain strands. Strands that give a relaxing effect are a trigger for me. While strands that give an energizing effect work quicker and better than my sumatriptan or o2.  Smoking or being around those smoking it is a trigger. But edibles or a vaporizer works perfectly.    Just thought I would chime in with that

The combo of ibuprofen, prednisone med pack and hydrocondone still is the only thing that stops my headaches.  If I don't take the hydrocodone or one of the other meds it's not effective.  I only have to take 1 tablet of 5mg hydrocodone and the headache gets is but kicked to the curb.  Usually I get pain relief of 8 hours at a time with that combo, sometimes days or months.  It has actually stopped the cycle many times before.  I do worry about the pills, all 3 of them are dangerous to take, not good for the body, especially the hydrocodone.  I am going to see if I can try a prescription of cannabis, if it doesn't work atleast I tried something less harmful.  I don't read about people dying from cannabis use too often and it comes in smoke free forms now too, like topical creams. 

Pot for me is completely neutral, it doesn't affect my CH's at all, good or bad. 

Mike R wrote,
The combo of ibuprofen, prednisone med pack and hydrocondone still is the only thing that stops my headaches.  If I don't take the hydrocodone or one of the other meds it's not effective.  I only have to take 1 tablet of 5mg hydrocodone and the headache gets is but kicked to the curb.  Usually I get pain relief of 8 hours at a time with that combo, sometimes days or months.  It has actually stopped the cycle many times before.  I do worry about the pills, all 3 of them are dangerous to take, not good for the body, especially the hydrocodone.  I am going to see if I can try a prescription of cannabis, if it doesn't work atleast I tried something less harmful.  I don't read about people dying from cannabis use too often and it comes in smoke free forms now too, like topical creams.

Hydrocodone is a semi-synthetic opioid derived from codeine. Hydrocodone is used orally as a narcotic analgesic and antitussive (cough medicine), often in combination with paracetamol (acetaminophen) or ibuprofen.[1] Hydrocodone is prescribed predominantly in the United States. The International Narcotics Control Board reported 99% of the worldwide supply in 2007 was consumed in the United States.

Hi Mike,
Maybe Pot would be a much better option than where you are
at present. Have you checked out ClusterBusters. The link is
to your left of this page.

Hoppy.