With oxygen you'll find that it will work a lot better if you use a non-rebreather mask. I and many others have found that this can kill off any CH, especially when used with a high flow rate, 15lpm or higher, with the higher the flow rate normally the quicker the abort.

Read up about how we use oxygen - Multimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!!  You need to or

I'd skip the naproxen as this is just a non-steroidal anti inflammatory and as a pain killer it'll make not a dent against a CH.

Similarly for using narcotic pain killers like hydrocodine, these just aren't really effective against CH and they result in issues like medication rebound headaches, needing increasing dosages and then dependence / addiction issues.

You are much better using either oxygen or sumatriptan nasal spray or injections.

Also are you using any preventive to cut down how many CHs you get? Something like verapamil, lithium or topomax? Preventing a CH is a whole lot less painful than having to kill one off.

Also look at how many of us are using vitamin D3 as an effective preventive. I've been CH pain free over 2.5 years using it.

1) side effects - do varapamil, topomax and lithium have physical or mental side effects when you take them long term? The only medicine I've been able to take long term is stomach acid medicine. Anything that changes my state on mind I seem to eventually reject.

2) alchohol- as a note, I used to drink two bourbons at dinner and 3 or 4 at cocktail parties and when the cluster headaches came on I realized that the bourbon was triggering the beast almost every time. I have given up all alchohol (6 months now) and am afraid of it now. This was a life changer and I hate cocktail parties now because talking to drunk people is annoying. This has been my preventative- abstention. I still have not figured out how to fit in socially without alchohol but I am becoming more tolerant of buzzed people at barbecues. I now get level 3 to 5 headaches but no terrible, pace the kitchen floor and moan for hours beast headaches. After 4 bourbon and ginger ales at a cocktail party I was woken up once at 2 in the next morning and had a head ache so terrible I was staring at my fingers and deciding that I would take a deal with the devil to cut off a finger if I never had another cluster headache again. I did decide on my wedding finger for some reason.

3) Codine-  I have injected the sumatriptan a number of times and it stopped the headache that night but twice I woke up the next morning with level 5 headache. But everytime I have used the ground hydrocodeine I sleep hard and wake up with no headache or shadow. The feeling of no shadow after days of it is really ephemeral. The codine does work for me but I do fear addiction. My rule is that unless I write level 5 or greater into my headache diary I do not take it.

4) Crunchy Foods- these things are different for everyone. For instance, even in the thaws of a terrible level 9 headache beast if I chew crunchy food the pain goes away completely for just a few moments. So I sometimes eat watermelon continuously, and popcorn and salads. I feel very lucky to have this bazaar "out" and am glad I do not have uninterruptible headaches like most others on this site. It I is funny that I envision my headache like a flickering lightbulb in a dingy basement. When it comes on, it flickers once with me going " hey, is that a headache" then it flickers on and I think "shit, this is going to suck" also, when it goes away, it flickers away, goes back on for a few seconds, then is gone, like a bulb flicker out. With the crunchy  food it actually turns off for a few seconds while my mind is processing the crunch sensation just like it goes away momentarily with a glass of cold water.

All medication can have side effects and not all people get all side effects. You'll find the standard side effects for most drugs list things down from quite common to very, very rare. Just imagine the "side effects" for driving a car or flying, the vast majority of people do them without any issues at all.

Just Google each medication plus the words "side effects" and you'll see all the possible issues for each, but also compare the risk to the benefit that is can bring too. And discuss them with your doctor.

Alcohol is a trigger for most people with CH, apart from a lucky few. Just avoid it when in cycle. It can also be used for the beer test, so when you think you've finished a cycle, try a beer or similar, if its gone, enjoy it, otherwise grab your favourite abortive and wait a bit longer...

Codeine, well as per my earlier post, I don't think this is a great idea as it doesn't work effectively and the addiction issues are all too real and so easy to fall into even with very light use. I was given codeine before I was diagnosed with CH and after just a few weeks (2 or 3) I went through the fun of withdrawal after following the doctors instructions to the letter. Just because twice you got another headache doesn't mean that you'd have not got them if you'd not used sumatriptan.

Bob Johnson wrote on Oct 6^th, 2014 at 10:16am:


It isn't quite universal as a trigger, there are a small number of people here including Aussie Brian and myself who can still enjoy alcohol without it triggering a CH.

But for the majority of people it is a strong trigger for CH.

Ok, so it's a year later and this is what has happened since I last posted. My cluster attacks have slowly increased in frequency and are constant, from 3 days a week up to all 7. 20 milligram nasal sumatriptan works for me if if take it early. I have tried injection and pill sumatriptan and they both slow but do not stop the headache like nasal. I even tried dermal sumatriptan but it was even less effective. I found a compounding company that made me a concoction that gives 5 Miligram per shot so I can use less doe and start earlier.
I have tried oxygen which works maybe a quarter of the time, I am low t and started testosterone and it help a lot of other things but unfortunately not my headaches.
Taurine. Melatonin. Vitamin d, magnesium, all seem ineffective. If a headache takes hold, trammadol, and if it keeps going then hydro codons. These don't stop the pain but I fall asleep hard and wake up with no headache. I call it abort through coma.
Am even starting one now, it's flickering on and off.

Twice I have had the odd experience of having a terrible headache that is building. I use nasal sumatriptan and then if I am watching a sad movie and start crying suddenly I feel sorry for myself and the terrible headache and their impacts and I cannot stop crying. For 10 minutes I sob, knowing it is chemical and headache created but I can't stop. It's fucked up. I'll pull myself out by visualizing myself from a ceiling camera angle and I think of how silly I look and then I stop. Really weird.

Anyway, I have no solution. The headaches are increasing in intensity and frequency. I have gotten real good at abortive techniques cycling through water guzzling, oxygen, coffee,meaning watermelon or tangerines. But nasal sumatriptan is God given key solution that is 80 percent and if that don't work then I condine myself into coma. I only use the hydrocodine during bad headaches and am lucky that I don't like the buzz and now associate it with the headache!

I need to work on preventatives now and am looking for recamendations.

look at reply number one from Mike on New Zealand and consider what he wrote as gospel. also consider lortab (Hydrocodone) will do nothing for your cluster headaches as a preventive, nor as an effective abort despite your odd coma comment.

Due to some unfortunate accidents requiring surgeries, I have been prescribed and personally swallowed thousands of them and not once for cluster headache over the past 35 years I've danced with this beast.

so I personally do understand the addiction, dependence and withdrawal of what you consider a remedy. continue this narcotic routine you are on and I guarantee you will have addiction. as well as serious withdrawal symptoms. And if you think you cry during a movie yow, LOL, you have no idea what hell you will be going through because of lortab withdrawals.

this website has everything you need in terms of helpful advice from expert patients and caring people who understand your pain and suffering. stop poisoning your liver.

-Gregg in Las Vegas

For years I took Topamax as a prevent, but a few years ago my neuro switched me to zonagran (I think that's how it's spelled). He said it was about the same as Topamax without the side effects.

I'm on the D3 regimen seriously (and have been for almost two years without a hit), but I still take the zonagran (just in case - I mean after all the years of being chronic I don't figure it can hurt).

I also take 20mg of Melatonin at night and don't have night hits (been doing that for years and years and it stopped the night hits almost completely.) BUT it took a while to get in my system and stop them... One time don't do it... ya gotta stick with it for several weeks before you say it doesn't work..

In fact most of the remedies we recommend you MUST stick with for a while before you pronounce them useless.

Most of us here have been right where you are -- feeling the world is against us and nobody understands.. (and we have the t-shirts - trust me). But the Vit D3 regimen has worked for me for almost two years (no hits at all) and I've enjoyed every minute of being pain free.

But I will go back to what everyone else is telling you about the narcs.. they only bring on rebounds, cause additions and do NOT stop the CH. A LOT of doctors don't realize this, but it's a fact. A can of Red Bull will do you more good than a hydrocodone.

One time my primary doctor thought he could help me by giving me a shot of some kind of strong narc and he gave it to me. I passed out, but the CH came thru. I was so drunk that I got out of bed and "crawled" to the bathroom to get my vasoconstrictor to stop the pain. But when I crawled back to bed I couldn't get back in it. A friend found me on the floor the next morning. He got really upset and went to the doctors office and brought him to my house to show him what he'd done. That was the last time the doc even thought about giving me any narcs for these things. After that he "listened" to me when I told him they didn't work. We found a "good" neuro shortly after I sobered up.

So I guess what I'm trying to say to you is that we've all been right where you are and have felt that nothing will work, but there is something that will work for you, but you have to give things a fair shot.

Do you have a good neuro? One that will listen to you and knows something about CH? If not -- well, that's the first step in getting help.

Get a NON-breather mask for the O2 and crank it up to 15-25 lpm and do it like Batch tells you (he had to yell at me several times till I did it right).

And you are NOT alone -- we're here and we DO know what you're going thru.. 

So I am starting to get a grip on my flavor of cluster headache. Headaches are still increasing to one or two a day.

1) I Had a local doctor try topomax and it had no effect on the headaches and terrible effects on my brain. I was constantly reaching for words and could not talk at a cocktail party.

2) Flew from VA to New England regional headache center and this was my first encounter with doctors who knew and understood cluster headaches. Got on varapamil and nasal zomax instead of nasal sumatriptan.

3) I maxed out my insurance to the zomax as it was about 1,000 a month to stop the headaches and my insurance company maxed me out at 3k. Found a compounder who mixed nasal decongestant with sumatriptan (flutic/sumatriptan) and I get a three month supply for 300 dollars. Cost problem solved.

4) found local ( an hour away) doctor at riverside pain and headache center in Williamsburg and this doctor said my prodrone or symptoms before the headache were way too strong (I has nasal dainage, chest heating and insane cravings for fruit) that he thought my headaches were more seizure like than normal cluster. He put me on Lamotrigine 200 mg twice a day. This has reduced the prodrone by 80 percent. Then .05 Clonazepam to reduce stress, another trigger, it's a light dose of Valium. As an aside it stop night time rumination actions, when you think of the same thing over and over again. And singular to reduce histamines, another trigger.

5) frequency  is still one or even three times a day, so this is still gradually increasing, but the lamtrigene is a drug enhancer, and now 3 Advil will often stop a beginning cluster. This was unheard of before. I was taking hydracodine before and it did nothing to stop the headache but it did sinificantly cut the pain.

6) still get beasts that cut through the Advil and I take a shot of the compounders sumatriptan and it goes away in about a half hour.

7) Anyway, no solution, no reductions in frequency, but a great lessening in pain as I can kill them almost always before they reach a level 3 or 4.

I feel compelled to chime in....

Weum, you have been given very good advice, but I wonder if you have even heard it.

I spent 14+ years in incredible agony as a chronic sufferer with 1-6 hits per day, everyday. Looking back, it is pitiful that I suffered so long and so deeply simply because I did not REALLY followup on the suggestions found here.

I just kept searching for some magic pharmaceutical concoction to cure me. It's truly sad to realize that the answers were right in front of me.......

Marc

Weum,
There are lots of us here that are Pain Free (PF) thanks to Batch's D3 regimen,
When on the regimen, no need to max out insurance or dig deep in your pockets, it costs only a few cents/day and, for me and up to 80% of people that take it, it is the most efficient way to not feel any pain from CH. You can read about Batch's D3 regimen on the threads "123 days pain free and I think I know why" and "Anti Inflamatory vitamin D3 regimen and survey".
The regimen does not involve taking drugs with terrible side effects and has stacks of benefits on top of getting rid of the terrible pains we all know too well.
Finding this site and coming accross Batch and the regimen are the best thing that have happened for my health
+ the suport and knowledge here from other sufferers is second to none.
You do not have to take all the drugs that can be prescribed by doctors or neuro's when taking the D3 regimen, i do not have medical insurance.
The replies to your posts posted above are invaluable.
All the best

Thierry wrote, When ordering from iherb, it is important to choose the postage option called: Airmail premium, or another one called Airmail (slower)
If you choose the other options it is a lot more likely that the packet will be intercepted by customs and you would then end up paying extra in import taxes, and we all know how much we like paying more taxes hey!

Yes! My parcel of vitamins was intercepted by customs once! When I ordered from iherb which delayed delivery, but their was no extra cost to me, just the inconvenience of it all. I order all my vitamins from Biovea  because they have offices located in most countries around the world including here down under therefor no need to come direct from the US and have to go through customs.

Cheers Hoppy