Quote:
Originally Posted by badmajama
I've been told caffeine will trigger my migraines more. Its when I cut off the caffeine it will start.
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Caffeine can be both a trigger and a cure.
When I suffered from cluster headaches (which, coincidentally stopped when I found out I was diabetic), one of the meds that worked for me was Ercaf, a prescription caffeine pill. It's a vasoconstrictor, used to treat vascular headaches like migraine.
Cluster headaches are like mini-migraines that occur multiple times a day for a minimum of three weeks. From the age of 17 to about 23 I had them four times a year. The worst one I had was sitting behind my right eye for about 2 weeks. I'd completely lost vision in that eye, and if looking at the eye you'd have thought I'd ruptured the artery... the pupil was about 1/2 the size of my other pupil, and there literally was no white to be seen.
Then... the headache switched sides. In a matter of about four hours, I'd lost vision in my other eye. I was completely blind.
My doctor and neurologist kinda freaked - my mom came up to college to get me, the doctors ordered a CT and MRI of my head, afraid I might have a brain tumor.
By the end of the ordeal, my doctors had me shooting lidocaine from a needle-less syringe up my nostrils, directly onto my sinuses, just trying to stop the pain.
That one lasted for just under a month. I was out of class for most of that time. I found that I could take a combination of menthol pads on my head and a prescription called indomethacin and could function somewhat, which allowed me to do some of my classwork.
In the years I had clusters, the only thing that worked for me all the time, was the indomethacin. It's usually prescribed as an arthritis medication. I had tried a number of prescribed narcotics, and they typically worked the first time. But they never worked after that. The indomethacin worked.