Hello,

I am writing for a good friend of mine who is a CH sufferer. I have been with her through various cycles and am supporting her to find the solution.

We have an oxygen tank which is extremely helpful.  She has just started another cycle of headaches (after nearly 2 years). Her general cycle lasts for around 6 weeks and is comprised of only night hits (after regulating her sleeping hours). This year we started a melatonin treatment. She is currently taking 10 mgs each night of regular (under the tongue) melatonin.  Since she started with this there has been a good amount of change, saying that she feels there is a "lid" on the headaches, and only phantom headaches (which are also aborted with oxygen).

How long do people take the melatonin for? The length of the whole cycle (this would be 6 weeks in her case)? Do you just drop off at some point?  Any recommendations would be appreciated.

Thanks so much,
Amanda :)

Hi Amanda,
In my case i take 10mg of Melatonin at night, i'm not a very
good sleeper so this helps. when in a cycle i took 15mg and
never experienced a night attack. So i think it's up to the
individual, bearing in mind it can take up to three weeks
to become effective. So if your friend has a six week cycle,
maybe it would be best to stay on it.

Hoppy.

Hi Hoppy,
Thanks for responding. "We" (as in my friend and I who wakes up with her) had 4 shadows and finally an attack this early morning. I just wrote another post about melatonin jump because we need do so something - it was getting better and then now worse again. We live in the middle-of-nowhere Mexico and only have the 5mg presentations. Has there ever been an issue for you doing a 10-15mg jump? Most seem to go up to 12 or 13 mgs. We´d like to try going up but don´t want to create any kind of conflict. I even read someone say that after 12 mgs the effect starts to go down.. (?).  Any ideas?

Thanks for sharing what you did.
Amanda

That metatonin is so effective is unusual--so be pleased!

It's a natural hormone in our body and there is no problem using it continuously. If you're curious, you could stop using about 1-2 weeks after you assume the cycle has ended and see what happens. Start again as needed.

Your isolation will, likely, make find a good doc who knows Cluster. So, print out the PDF article, below and record the web site and tuck away in case you have need.

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START PRINTPAGEMultimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!!  You need to or END PRINTPAGE. Two books, one free, available as an e-book; second aimed at professionals. Section of many journal articles. Site worth exploring. Robbins is one of the leading headache docs in the Chicago area.

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Melatonin is incredibly safe and with some natural supplements, you aren't getting melatonin.
Assuming you are getting real melatonin, it's safe to take forever basically. I use 10mg a night even when I'm not having headaches because it helps me get to sleep. There are some case studies where 70+ mg of melatonin was used in cancer patients with depression.

I remember seeing a study a few years back that said that episodic clusterheads had low melatonin production throughout the year - even when not getting hit. That suggests that a small regular dose might be a good thing for some of us.

Over the past decade, I have occasionally gotten persistent stomach pain. Docs are conditioned to say 'esophagitis!' or 'GERD!!" or 'reflux!!!' and counsel an acid blocker, but there are several studies showing that melatonin has a protective effect on the stomach lining, and going back on the melatonin seems to dispatch my stomach pain within a day or two.

"Mechanisms of Esophageal Protection, Gastroprotection and Ulcer Healing by Melatonin. Implications for the Therapeutic Use of Melatonin in Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) and Peptic Ulcer Disease."  Pubmed 24251671

The Alchemist wrote on Dec 11^th, 2013 at 8:18pm:

I remember seeing a study a few years back that said that episodic clusterheads had low melatonin production throughout the year - even when not getting hit. That suggests that a small regular dose might be a good thing for some of us.

Thanks for your insights - I have actually found the opposite in my reading - that episodics tend to become more normalized, or at least in a pattern of their own when they are not in a CH period. 

I had a link to post but the forum won´t let me since I don´t have enough active messages yet - later I can post it.

It´s clear that the melatonin does have some effect.  Unfortunately last night here was really difficult.  So it´s a little discouraging.  She is also on the D3 regime and had two nights which were much better than usual - the night before last there was only one hit after 6am, which was abort-able through oxygen.  So we were quite excited.  Last night however there were 6 hits though out the night, the last one in the morning.  She is still at 13mgs of melatonin, and doesn´t want to go up right now.