I have been having clusters since 1977. O2 works very well for me and I can live a fairly normal life. This last bout is something new for me.
At night when I go to sleep I get woken at 90 minute intervals with a cluster. I get up do some jumping jacks, shadow box and then turn on the O2. This happens every 90 minutes.
I am traveling for the next few weeks and will not have O2 available so I am researching for a solution. Specifically I am looking for anyone that has experience with taking Magnesium either alone or with Melatonin. I have found several articles recommending taking 400 mg ionizable magnesium 3 times a day, one of those times being bedtime. It is also suggested to take 9mg of melatonin daily.
Have you tired magneisum? What were the results?
Thanks in advance,
Jim

FramCire makes some very good points. If you have an O2 supplier, they can usually arrange to have it delivered to your hotel.

Also, my experience with Magnesium tells me that if you're going to take that much of it, you might want to buy some disposable diapers. And keep a few with you at all times.

FramCire, I do the virgorous exercise to get me breathing deeply. It helps the 02 work faster. I don't use a mask or regulator I am a bottle baby. I plan on visiting the local welding supply house. No time for testing abortives this bout just started a week and a half ago and I am heading out in 3 days.
Brew, Thanks for the tip on diapers. The big question is, Did it help the clusters?
LeLimey, I take no drugs. Been there done that for 20 years nothing worked. I have been pure 02 for the last 10 years or so and want to stay that way. This is a special case. This waking every 90 minutes thing has just started and the trip is unavoidable. I want to stay away from drugs, but am willing to give dietary supplements a try to get me over this hump.

Effective and especially convenient for travel, since it's a pill......

Headache 2001 Sep;41(8):813-6 

Olanzapine as an Abortive Agent for Cluster Headache.

Rozen TD.

Department of Neurology, Jefferson Headache Center/Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, Pa.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate olanzapine as a cluster headache abortive agent in an open-label trial. BACKGROUND: Cluster headache is the most painful headache syndrome known. There are very few recognized abortive therapies for cluster headache and fewer for patients who have contraindications to vasoconstrictive drugs. METHODS: Olanzapine was given as an abortive agent to five patients with cluster headache in an open-label trial. THE INITIAL OLANZAPINE DOSE WAS 5 MG, AND THE DOSE WAS INCREASED TO 10 MG IF THERE WAS NO PAIN RELIEF. THE DOSAGE WAS DECREASED TO 2.5 MG IF THE 5-MG DOSE WAS EFFECTIVE BUT CAUSED ADVERSE EFFECTS. To be included in the study, each patient had to treat at least two attacks with either an effective dose or the highest tolerated dose. RESULTS: Five patients completed the investigation (four men, one woman; four with chronic cluster, one with episodic cluster). Olanzapine reduced cluster pain by at least 80% in four of five patients, and TWO PATIENTS BECAME HEADACHE-FREE AFTER TAKING THE DRUG. Olanzapine typically alleviated pain within 20 minutes after oral dosing and treatment response was consistent across multiple treated attacks. The only adverse event was sleepiness. CONCLUSIONS: Olanzapine appears to be a good abortive agent for cluster headache. IT ALLEVIATES PAIN QUICKLY AND HAS A CONSISTENT RESPONSE ACROSS MULTIPLE TREATED ATTACKS. IT APPEARS TO WORK IN BOTH EPISODIC AND CHRONIC CLUSTER HEADACHE.

PMID 11576207 PubMed

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Olanzapine has a brand name of "Zyprexa" and is a antipsychotic. Don't be put off by this primary usage. Several of the drugs used to treat CH are cross over applications, that is, drugs approved by the FDA for one purpose which are found to be effective with unrelated conditions--BJ.

NovellRed wrote on Dec 12^th, 2009 at 11:41am:


When I go into that "every 90 minutes" phase, none of the dietary supplements do much at all for me. I am forced to resort to drugs.

However, when I switched to hyperventilating with O2 (as you said, breathing like you are in the middle of hard run) I found that the 60-90 minute re-attacks spread out to 120-180 minutes. Not great, but I can kill them 3-6 minutes and get back to sleep.

Again, if do not really force myself to breathe hard and fast, they come back much sooner.

Best of luck.

Bob P.
I have a 2 foot long high pressure braided steel hose that I use for transferring 02 from a large tank that I get from a welding supplier into a mid size tank for home use and 2 small tanks for for car/motorcycle use.
I simply attach the hose to a bottle and crack the valve a bit. The 02 has the 2 foot length of the hose to expand and bring the pressure down to where I just place the end in my mouth and breath it in.
I have been doing it that way for many years and my lips are still intact.
Jim

rich72 wrote on Dec 13^th, 2009 at 12:19pm:


An excersize in place. You jump up in the air and spread your feet, and clap your hands over your head. You jump from that and close your feet and drop your hands to the side. Repeat many times.

I don't personally do that, bit I did as a lad playing sports.

The no regulator seems a little scarey to me too.... I suppose you can learn good controll with the valve though. Seems wastefull of o2 just the same.

Marc, That was creative. Where did you exhale? I would assume away from the mouth piece...

Me too! for 20+ years my hits were daytime only, then last cycle and this one that started 2 days ago, I got the nightime 60 to 90 minutes. Horrible! I was unprepared the first night as I hadn't had ch for 2 years, so I had to just deal. I take a hot shower, always makes it a little better immediately, then ice after, I get the hit down to 25 minutes. After 4 showers it was 4 am and I thought I would sit in a big chair rather than going back to sleep ( planning on getting to the er early) I fell asleep in the chair for 2 hours or so and woke up with no ch. I got hit on the way to the er; by the way do your hits stop like mine one second intense pain the next completely gone?

saxman wrote on Dec 17^th, 2009 at 7:11pm:


Yup and yup. Many of us have spent nights in a chair just to avoid laying down.

My hits go from zero to agony in about 5 minutes, then they just drain away like someone pulled the plug.

Marc

saxman , I answered in your other thread, but here we do things a little different...

In the night the CH shadow will wake me up and it sucks to be blunt. My rig is in a un-heated barn. The welding set because i weld and braze.. marc has some other rig, and he can explain it better than I can because I don't know every detail.

I am a long hair country boy, and it would be a mistake to call me a red neck, but the 2 types are close.

Your symtoms are a close match to me and many others.

If I get lazy and don't move to get dressed and get out there to the o2 I will suffer for it, and sometimes i just get that lazy and fight, let the demon have it's will awhile.

Other times i get up and get out fast. If it is still just a hard shadow i get the the o2 going and the pain is stopping with in 5 minutes. The pain is gone shortly after that time, but I remain breathing for as long as I was in pain and a little more.

When the pain is totally gone so far as it will, as I have a constant mild shadow for the entire season, I go walking out in the field, and look at the snow in my garden, I check out the stars if any, and on a cold night like tonight around 0 degrees the stars will be bright. I breath then too, as if I were on the bottle, and then go back and breath a little more. In all I spend around 1 hour, but am not in pain for long.

I may have to go to bed and see if sleep will happen. Sometimes I do, and other times sleep eludes me, or I get to dreaming in vivid color and feel like I got no sleep. Sometimes it is hard to tell if I was sleeping or awake..

I can take 2 more hits in a given night, so it gets old fast, but it isn't the hard pain you are taking. Not anymore, unless i want to fight.

That pred is gonna eat you up. get off that stuff asap. I understand you can't just stop it and have to be taken off a dose at a time, but get off that stuff.

The way i think I would rather take all the pain head on, than be on that drug for a long time.

o2 can and will abort for you like it does for those of us who get seriouse about the way to use it...

Only 100% o2 works and I doubt you had a fair shot at that in any EMT ward. The best thing is no after effects..

That lets you still deal with loss of sleep, but no one can change that yet.

Read the tips on o2 in the side bar, read about tanks, sizes and ways to regulate a bottle.

Read about the seeds. I haven't tried these seeds yet, as io want nothing to do with drugs, but a day may come when I decide it is time for me to try.

In my day I did more than my fair share of drugs for recreation, and just want nothing to do with that life.

If i find someday i can do up seeds and put Ch to bed, maybe then. If there is any effects like a high I don't want it.

No one helped me beat drugs, I just decided one day to get off and so i did. I never looked back, but perhaps took it to some extreme, in that I don't take over the counter meds either.

I find lots of water, OJ and honey each day and a fair diet fixes most anything that can go wrong with my body.

Get o2!