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Showing content with the highest reputation on 04/28/2019 in all areas

  1. Your ginger candies might or might not be strong enough and gingery enough to give ginger a fair test. Strong tea is probably better, and you can add honey or other things to make it more candylike. Fresh ginger cut up and boiled is the best tea. Some people make it from powdered ginger, but that's a gloppy process. Many/most docs are a lot more comfortable prescribing meds than prescribing O2. Lithium is a ridiculous initial suggestion. The literature is clear that lithium is not advisable except for patients who are chronic, in part because the side effects are so undesirable and in part because stopping lithium often leads to severe rebound attacks. Topamax is less ridiculous, but not a whole lot less. I would encourage you to try to find a competent (regarding CH) neuro, which you're most likely to encounter at a headache center. Or. if your current doc is amenable to your suggestions and willing to consider your input, you could stick with him/her, because if you stay at this site you'll know as much as s/he does about CH meds, and about all s/he is good for is prescribing things you can't get for yourself. If some of the possible pharma treatment breakthroughs occur (e.g., if Lilly's new drug, Emgality, lives up to some people's expectations), you'll need a doctor to prescribe them if you want them. By then, you might be very effectively managing your CH with mostly-non-pharma treatments.
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  2. There are a lot of apps available to doctors to look up medically-recommended treatments for conditions. One of the commonly-used ones is called UpToDate. In that app, it says (with citations to medical literature): "For patients with acute cluster headache, we recommend initial treatment with either 100 percent oxygen or a triptan, in agreement with national guidelines and expert consensus." I suppose the "or" in there can throw things off, but a rational discussion of efficacy, side effects, and other factors (cost, usage limitations) would lead toward O2, or, of course, both. The JAMA article with the O2 study is here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/185035. As I note here, there are reasons other than efficacy that seem to hold doctors back from prescribing O2.
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  3. I would upload for you but the file size is 5 mb which exceeds permitted limits. The first article is a case report of deep brain stimulation in white matter that needed reprogramming at 10 months and reports of pain free at three years The second is a review article that includes cluster headaches. The article advises caution with surgery and clusters as reports of initial success tend to wean off significantly.
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