Hi. CH return after five years PF. I think it's because of the extremely high humidity in NY right now. Does anyone know if humidity can set off the beast? Very similar to barometric pressure headaches but with the cluster nighttime symptoms.

Hi bm,
  triggers for Ch seem to be different, person by person
some alcohol is a big trigger, others seem to have no issue with it.  Heat and humidity is a definite trigger for me, we quite often get continuous days of 100 f plus and I know I have to cool down when I get to a certain point.
Do you have a stock of preventatives on hand or abortive drugs, ie imitrix or O2 available ?  even though I've been relatively pain free this year, due to the vit d3 regime, I always keep a back up of meds, should the beast decide to unexpectedly make an appearance.
Hope its not a return for you !  5 years of being pain free would be brilliant !
regards
colin

Hi there! Thanks so much for your reply. I actually have no mess right now. Last time they went away by large doses of magnesium supplements but not working this time around. I'm already on two weeks straight of the nightly beast so it's def another cycle unfortunately. My last cycle was a few months and I really thought that was it for me. I'm very interested in trying Imitrex. I'm actually scheduling dr time this time around. Hopefully I can get a few years again after this one. Fingers crossed.

Hi bm,
           I see that you have tried the vit d3.  have you tried to titrate your levels up ?  most of us get the blood test to see what our levels are, then titrate up to get it to the right level. Batch has got some new ideas and has added a few things since you probably tried it, like a coarse of vit b multi for 3 months which has been very successful.
But your doing the right thing and making an appointment with your doctor, which is important to do. But please read up on the developments on batches regime, it may be a solution for you.
best of luck and I hope this cycle is short lived for you.

kindest regards
colin

I agree with blacklab as humidity seems to do it for me too. Did you take vitamin D3, calcium and fish oil along with your magnesium. They all work together so it's important to take the whole regime.

If you get imitrex, ask for the injections. The tablets are too slow to take effect and therefore not much help, but the auto injections are brilliant and will kill off a big one in 5 - 10 minutes.A few people (not many) cannot take it, or get bad side effects, but if you are OK with it it's the best abortive there is.
Maz.

Yep the barometer, humidity, too much heat (can't stand to get to hot - keep house at meat hanging temps).

Here in the country we BURN our trash and I have to stay away from "smoke" - always was a BIG trigger..

What the others said about the D3 "regimen"... Put them all together and they've been working wonders for a lot of us.

Also you might try melatonin at night (I take 20mg before bedtime) for those night-time hits. I started taking this back in about 2002 and quit having night hits.

Hope you're PF soon..  :-*

Likely not humidity but its impact of elevating our body temperature.

Re. burning trash as a trigger. Possibly, becasue this is liberating some chemicals which do trigger attacks for some folks.  (We have long recognized some cleaning chemicals are triggers--solvents in general, I assume.)
====
Lancet. 1999 Sep 18;354(9183):1001-2.
Comment in:
Lancet. 2000 Jan 8;355(9198):147.

A new cluster headache precipitant: increased body heat.

Blau JN, Engel HO.

Exercise, a hot bath, or elevated environmental temperature provoked cluster headaches, within 1 h, in 75 out of 200 patients. This new observation accords with recognised precipitants--alcohol, histamine, and gyceryl trinitrate--perhaps via generalised vasodilatation or hypothalamic activation.

Publication Types:
Letter

PMID: 10501368 [PubMed]
====

Thanks so much everyone for the inputs.  I will def look into all of them. I love this website so much because not enough people out there understand what I mean when I say I have cluster headaches. It's so nice to talk to you all who understand first hand. I have been sleeping with the window open above my bed for past few nights and last night was the first night in two weeks that I didn't have an attack and slept through the whole night.  Normally I sleep with window closed in my small bedroom so must be something with getting that oxygen in your room as well.

Interesting read on the increased body temperature. Makes perfect sense to me now. When I'm having my nightly 8-9pm attack anytime during the day when I get into my car I will have a 20-45 attack within 5-10 minutes. I live in the southern US so with heat index of 105 I'm sure my tiny black leather car is reaching the 120's. And my normal body temperature is around 97.6.   8-)

Yes. Very interesting. My current cycle started Fourth of July weekend when it started to get extremely hot and humid here.

I also started to get attacks with high humidity here in Alexandria Egypt , I wonder if cold can be a trigger as well.