The goal of treatment is to reduce the frequency, severity, and duration of a patient’s migraine headaches. Choosing a preventive strategy or a pain-relieving strategy depends on the frequency and severity of the headaches, the degree of disability the headaches cause and other medical conditions.
Over-the-counter pain medications are often effective headache relievers. Try acetaminophen (Tylenol), aspirin, or ibuprofen (Advil or Motrin) for tension headaches. Migraine headaches may respond to aspirin, naproxen (Aleve), or combination medications such as Excedrin Migraine. Prescription medications used for migraine headaches include ergotamine, dihydroergotamine, ergotamine with caffeine (Cafergot), isometheptene (Midrin), and triptans like sumatriptan (Imitrex), rizatriptan (Maxalt), almotriptan (Axert), andzolmitriptan (Zomig). Sometimes medications to relieve nausea and vomiting are helpful for other migraine symptoms.
Prevention includes taking prescribed medications, avoiding or minimizing the causes, and learning self-help measures, such as biofeedback or relaxation exercises. If your doctor suggests medications, you should realize that they may take several weeks to become effective and they can have side effects. Thus, you must be patient and cooperate with your doctor to find the optimal treatment.
Treatment may be as simple as avoiding the headache triggers or may require biofeedback, psychological counseling and behavior modification programs in addition to drug therapy. Often, sleep improvement therapy is needed as sleep disturbances in migraine is common.
Mild migraine attacks tend to clear up in a few hours. It’s best to rest in a quiet, darkened room, and use the painkiller that you would normally take for a non-migrainous headache. Soluble versions of these painkillers may work better than tablets. Take it as soon as you can – treatments for migraine are more effective when you take them early on in an attack.
Aspirin or acetaminophen (or both of these analgesics) are often combined with caffeine or a sedative drug in a single medication. For example, Excedrin combines aspirin, acetaminophen and caffeine. Combination drugs such as this may be more effective than are pure analgesics for pain relief. Although many combination drugs are available over-the-counter, analgesic-sedative combinations can be obtained only by prescription because they may be addictive and can lead to chronic daily headache.
You should understand that your doctor will not prescribe any prophylactic Headache Treatment unless you are suffering from several and frequent headache attacks a month. When you take the prophylactic medication you will be monitored for side effects like weight gain, water retention, lethargy, memory impairment and hallucinations.
The treatment of headaches with prophylactic medication begins with low doses. The dosage amount is increased as time passes. You will be tested every month or so to see if the treatment is taking effect. Your doctor will also make sure that during the phase of your Headache Treatment that you are not taking any other types of medication or vitamins.
The psychological dynamic of cluster headaches are much the same as that for migraines. Each of these extremely painful conditions can result in frustration, despair and depression. As with migraine headaches, an integrated approach to pain treatment that includes medications, relaxation techniques and physical therapy works best to manage cluster headache pain.
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