howdy all.. I have had chs for  25 years or so.. I had a few years of not having any and then a few weeks ago,, i got hit pretty good with some 8s and 9s on the pain scale.. I went back as far as I could to my diary to try and figure out what the fook I was doing wrong now, or different then,, If your new to Clusters,,, please do yourself a favor and keep a diary going... everytime you get hit or not, keep a diary for every day during your cycle... keep track of the exact food and drink you had, when you went to bed, who you talked to, what kind of stress you had that day... all that stuff will really come in handy later on.. so keep a diary...  anyway,,

I have come up with some clues that seem to be involving my diet..  the word 'histimine' has been on my mind lately because reading that the clusters or the dialated blood vessle no 5.. i think thats the one.. that runs behind the left eye... well, im no doctor and I have talked with a few that are as about as clueless, but I got a list of foods that produce allot of histimine and I was amazed at the large variety of foods that can and could trigger a bad cycle..  Several years ago i went on a diet that for the most part did not include many of the foods that produce histimine, and I lost about 50 pounds or so doing pretty much a strict green salad for dinner, one egg and oatmeal for breakfast and and apple or bannana for lunch type of diet..  just seemed like a sensable diet, it wasnt one of those Atkins type diets,, but for the most part I lost weight, and certainly felt better, plus the blood pressure returned to normal and didnt have to use the blood pressure pills... well,  i fell off that diet over the past couple years and got back into my old eating habbits, probably from depression,, i dont know,, but i gained about 30 pounds back and i noticed the food groups such as hot dogs, lots of spinich salad, which produces histimine, tomatos, strawberrys, lots of other stuff that, when checking the list o f histimine foods,, yep they were on the list...
here is the list to take a look at:  I would not be too surprised to find some foods on this list that you should not eat...

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So for the past week or so I got back on the old diet plan and i must say that it took a few days of that diet, but, i feel much better and I am about a third way into my cycle period and the pain level has reduced to a workable level and the duration of the attack and the freqency of attacks has been reduced as well...  its a long letter to end up telling you to check your diet and what you are eating and drinking..  If histimine is what could be a major cause for ch's then reducing the amount of histimine and maybe even taking some anti histimine  or histimine blocker type foods like raw honey,,,on a daily bases might prove helpfull, or at least worth giving a try.. I have read that it takes about 3 weeks to push alot of the histimine out of the system, diont know if thats true or not, but with me, it seemed to take a whole lot less of just sticking to a strict diet, for a week or so....

The other thing that I did was get an CPAP sleep apnea machine that provides positive pressure air so to get the proper amount of oxygen during sleep and a more restfull sleep..  Its not hooked up to any pure oxygen, its just room air applied with positive pressure.. I read that most all ch sufferers have sleep apnea and that should be a flag to pay attention to..  Since using the machine, my life quality is way up, having a full nights rest is just wonderful and what it did mostly was eliminate the secondary ch attack,,, during the morning hours.. 

The coffee is a must,,, strong coffee... having it ready to drink in large quanities at the first onset of the attack, along with deep breathing and even fast pacing back and forth with an ice pack on the front of my head, sometimes moving it around to the back of the neck... and then a hot shower....   an alturnitive to the expensive Imitrex injection... but again,,, its what seems to work for me...  I do believe that  diet and getting regular with sleep patturns with the help of the CPAP machine, those two things really made a huge change in the streangth, leangth, and how often I get attacked...  Good luck with it all and im glad they have this site up... learning lots of things and finding out what others are doing... a huge help...  im awful at typing and I dont spell well at all, but if you have any questions or want a point of view, to the newbee our there, feel free to send me a note or respond to this.... 
Doug