New treatment for cluster headaches
This is good news: Karen Kaplan at the LA Times:
"Cluster headache is probably the most severe pain known to humans. Most female patients describe each attack as worse than childbirth."
You’d think that such an excruciating condition would require some mighty strong medicine. But a study coming out today in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. — the source of the statement above — concludes that cluster headaches can be treated by inhaling pure 100% oxygen.
Cluster headaches affect about 0.3% of the general population, according to the study. The National Institutes of Health says the debilitating headaches can strike daily for weeks at a time.Other sources say the bouts can last for months before patients go into remission.
Migraine drugs such as Imitrex (sumatriptan) are typically prescribed to stop the pain, but there are limits on daily usage. A small study of 15 patients has found that inhaling high-flow oxygen for 15 minutes was helpful. A trio of researchers from the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London decided to test the therapy more rigorously.
They found 76 patients who suffered cluster headaches and treated them for four attacks. They were asked to inhale either pure oxygen or normal air (which includes 21% oxygen) through a face mask for 15 minutes. Neither the patients nor the providers knew which odorless, colorless gas was being administered.
But there was a difference. When asked to rate their pain relief, …
This has been known to sufferers for at least 10 years– I had an oxygen tank during a particularly bad episode as far back as 2001. It’s a great treatment, and it works quite well, the problem is that it doesn’t stop future headaches.
The best way I can describe a cluster headache is that it’s like that sinus freeze sensation you get when you drink something cold too fast. Triple it, locate it behind one of your eyes, and have it happen several times a day for as many as two hours. Having to suffer it for only 15-20 minutes instead of an hour or two is great, except that you still have to suffer it. And these suckers, unlike migraines, can happen multiple times a day.
So it’s not just for nostalgia for the 60s that I say that the LSD/psilocybin research is also extremely promising.
Lionel
10 December 2009 at 2:52 pm
I have read about that as well. Who knows, the US might someday adopt a rational drug policy. It will take a while, though.
LeisureGuy
10 December 2009 at 3:03 pm
One of the crazier things about it is that a drug that was used to prevent cluster headaches (but to my knowledge is no longer available for non-abuse reasons) was invented by Albert Hoffmann in the same set of experiments that created LSD. (It was called Sansert, IIRC) Did quite well for me in preventing headaches, but I couldn’t function as a rational human being while I was on it and so was taken off after a week or so. There’s obviously something to it, and you’d think they’d be willing to let (strictly controlled) tests be done– especially since the cluster/LSD people are taking doses that are far smaller than street doses.
Lionel
10 December 2009 at 3:19 pm