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I am taking melatonin now for a month. I don't know if accidental or not but it looks like headaches are gradually getting better. We have now again a period of unstable weather (it normally get bad then) but headaches stay very moderate - easier to handle. Yesterday it was a bit bad again but just 50 mg indomethacin was sufficient to get painfree for the rest of the day. Side effect of melatonin are very vivid dreams. So, Thanks for this recommendation ! siegfried

I did wean myself off all stills meds. Next cycle I will try with the meds to bust. Just was so unsure and at the moment the beast is way worse than my messed up body so all I can focus on was stopping the cycle at any cost. Today bust #2. And tomorrow I’m going back on the stills disease med regimen. I keep asking why me this week. Just got To keep swimming!!

I don't think you will get an answer to this because of the variety of herbal products out there. My observation from attending CB conferences is that a significant number of clusterheads are smokers. I have heard neurologist state this is a cause of the clusters but I suspicion the opposite is true. Nicotine is a vasoconstrictor and vaso constriction is desirable in aborting cluster headaches. So if you have a headache and smoking helps even a little you are reinforced to smoke. It becomes a vicious cycle. There are plenty of cluster heads who do not smoke so drawing conclusions is hard even with a more common use on inhalant. Pretty much anything you inhale into your lungs isn't good for them. The smoke/vapor causes irritation and allows other problems to manifest.

You have been given some significant challenges. Your strength should be an asset as you control the conditions. Personally if you have had busting success in the past I would try busting while using your current Stills meds. If you are stable on the meds and they are effective don’t start making your body confused by changing the dosing.. Prednisone has been identified as a blocker by some but there is little understanding why it would block. Ten mg is a relatively small dose. If you don’t get results you might briefly lower the steroids but my guess is you will be fine. My experience was taking 100 mg prednisone a day did not stop the effects of mm and when the mm effect kicked it I was able to get off the steroids. That too is anecdotal so take it for what it’s worth. the methotrexate is an anti metabolite metabolized in the gut and liver. It doesn’t use the same breakdown enzymes as psilocybin so it should be ok. As you are aware methotrexate and chronic steroid use a necessary serious treatment in these types of rheumatologic conditions so vigilant monitoring is critical. Stay strong

Siegfried, What was your 25(OH)D3 serum concentration? Here are my labs for serum 25(OH)D3, Calcium and PTH over the last three years. My PCP understands calcium homeostasis and that I keep my 25(OH)D3 serum concentration this high to prevent my CH during periods of high pollen and mold spore counts. Accordingly, he has no problems with it being this high as long as my serum calcium remains within its normal reference range and as you can see, it has. Did your PCP run labs for your serum calcium and PTH? Take care and please keep us posted. V/R, Batch

Paula, sorry you're going through this. Stills Disease sounds awful. I'm sorry to say that is generally believed here that prednisone blocks the effects of busting. (I guess it might be somewhat surprising that you are having attacks, since prednisone often stops attacks. But the dosage you are taking is lower than what would typically be used to treat CH (except that I don't understand the effects of methotrexate on the dosage).) Do you have other resources to deal with your attacks? Oxygen, for example? It seems like a call to Dr. McGeeney would be a very good idea.

Thanks for the video. My observations 1) Sleep is truly affected by clusters (or do cluster affect sleep) 2) We have much to learn about the relationship of sleep stages to precipitating clusters 3) Yes it is scary to sleep during cluster cycle but avoiding sleep makes it worse 4) I am getting very old if that "kid" has 2 post doc degrees