Ricardo
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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)...
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Cannabis and CHs (Read 6998 times)
