When the Cure is Worse Than the Disease
Monday November 3, 2008
We all know headaches are quite a concern, so it's not surprising to find that headaches are a global problem. Specifically, international researchers are calling for more investigation into effective treatments for medication overuse headaches (MOH). MOH has been formerly known as rebound headache, drug-induced headache, or drug-misuse headache. Whatever we end up calling it, MOH is a big problem that isn't very well understood.
The November issue of Cephalgia contains a series of international articles dealing with the topic of MOH, many looking at how physicians in foreign countries are handling the problem. In the past headache sufferers are withdrawn from their treatment of choice, allowed to "detox," and then begin treatment from that point. There is some international thought that using a prophylactic treatment before withdrawing the overused medication may be a better approach. Ultimately, many researchers feel there is a need to do more research, making understanding MOH a priority in headache medicine.
Comments
I’ve had headaches since my preteens. I suffered. Finally I found out about oxygen. It seems that I have cluster headaches and oxygen can knock them out within 10 minutes at a rate of 8L/min with a cannula.
I don’t have to go to the ER for a demerol shot to make me sicker anymore…or take morphine!
Oxygen is GREAT!
I recently went through “detox” from MOH, and I can attest that migraines every day for three weeks is enough to make one ready to try anything. Luckily for me, the psychologist I see for therapy encouraged me to enter a hospital with psychiatric wards. There, besides receiving treatment for my treatment-resistant depression, I also was seen daily by an Internist, who is a headache specialist. He allowed me to take Imitrex and/or Midrin while I was in the hospital. Although the triptans are considered possible suspects of causing MOH, I actually did quit having the daily “detox” migraines after 3 weeks. What a relief! Unfortunately, I have never found relief from migraines with prophilactic use of any of the anti-seizure drugs; plus I had many negative side effects with each.
I am a chronic migraine sufferer for the past 30 years. Since 1/1/08, I had had a daily migraine. It seems that I was bound up in rebound from Imitrex. I was taking one every day. After David Buchholz’s book, Heal Your Headache, and with my neurologist’s help, I went on a detox diet and no more imitrex. It was rough toughing out the migraines that followed but well worth it. I used a beta blocker as a prophylactic as well. Currently, I have gone three months with only 5 days of migraine. One thing that I had read is that if you’re in a long state of migraine, you can increase the beta blocker temporarily. Does anyone know about that?