Exactly What Are Cluster Headaches And How Can We Treat Them?

In spite of the fact that they are pretty unusual cluster headaches are classed as being amongst the most painful things that you can experience. Luckily they are fairly unusual and, whilst other frequently painful headaches such as migraines attack about 10 percent of the population, under one third of one percent suffer from cluster headaches. Most people describe cluster headaches as much worse than migraines and many women say that they are more painful than giving birth.

Cluster headaches, which often appear as a sharp stabbing pain behind one eye or near the temple, are characterized by the fact that they normally appear at regular times. This means that they tend to strike at a particular time of day, last for an hour or less, and then strike again at the same time the following day with this pattern repeating itself for a number of weeks, months or even longer. Cluster headaches also tend to strike without any warning and are unlike migraines which are frequently preceded by symptoms such as flashing lights.

Just why we get cluster headaches remains a mystery although some scientists believe that they arise out of an abnormality in the hypothalamus, which is a small gland that regulates the body's biological clock and is affected by alterations to the length of the day and a number of other things.

Yet another important difference between cluster headaches and migraines is the gender of sufferers. With migraine headaches about three quarters of the almost twenty-eight million sufferers in the US alone are women and just one quarter are men. When it comes to cluster headaches however between eighty and ninety percent of sufferers are men.

Traditional treatments for ordinary or migraine headaches are usually of little use for cluster headaches and such once miracle drugs as ibuprofen and aspirin have virtually no impact.

One treatment that has been demonstrated to be fairly effective is the inhalation of pure oxygen. Of course this type of treatment cannot be used until after the onset of the headache but inhaling pure oxygen for a severa minutes will frequently relief the pain of the headache noticeably.

Yet another relatively good treatment is that of taking a class of drugs called triptans that are commonly used to treat migraines. Here however the drug needs to be administered in the form of a nasal spray to be effective and this can be far from easy as cluster headaches will sometimes produce swelling in the nasal passages. If this is the case then the drug may also be effective if given by injection. Once more this is a treatment that has to be given after the headache has appeared.

Because cluster headaches attack with a clear pattern it would be especially useful to have some form of preventative medicine that could be taken regularly shortly before a headache hits. Unfortunately however because the condition is so rare and is not well understood we have very little information about which drugs might or might not be effective as preventative treatment.

In extreme cases of cluster headaches surgery to block nerves and other neurological procedures may be carried out but this should be seen as very much a last resort and it is not always wholly effective.

TheMigraineHeadacheCenter.com provides a wealth of information on both migraine headaches and cluster headaches