Hello All, I want to thank you for putting this site together. The information I discovered on here has helped me so much!
I found this site about 4 months ago while google searching around for better vitamins to take for "migraines". Now I feel obligated to share my thanks to the information I found on this forum that I / anyone cannot find elsewhere. Forgive me if I'm positing information that was previously posted. Before I found this site, my Neurologist had never mentioned anything about a "cluster headache" to me, ever.
Background on me: I'm 38, male, know nothing about the medical field (mechanical engineer). I have traveled domestically and internationally for the last 18 years, a lot. 7 years ago, my headache started. I went to the dentist first because I thought it was my back molars where I had a filling. They replaced the filling, nothing changed, then forwarded me to a "sleep and TMJ specialist". They scanned me, gave me a mouth guard. I do grind my teeth, so needed this. Dealt with severe headaches still. Always the left of my face/eye/jaw. I didn't know it was something not related to my jaw. I lived the next 6 years on OTC meds, which do nothing, except maybe goodys powder or excederin tension.
I got pissed off about the headaches that I would get every night. This has been going on for years. Yes, they hurt like hell, I just dealt with them. I went to the family Dr., who forwarded me to Nurologist in Pittsburgh. Scanned me, cost me a lot of money, I have chronic migraines. This was in October of 2020. They put me on Topamax, which helps. I have no side effects and only take 50mg/day. I really don’t want to go to a higher doseage after readying some horrible reviews. It reduced the headache frequency. At the same time that I started on the Topamax, I also started on a bunch of vitamins. I also started on Chantix and stopped smoking. I think I found this forum a few weeks after starting on my new regimen.
I have a few notes and questions:
1) Do I have “CH”? My symptoms are 100% identical to the symptoms of CH. Without a doubt. As soon as I found articles on CH, I thought to myself, holy shit, this is exactly what I have. What causes the CH to begin with??
2) I am on all of the “Vitamin D” supplements now, except the Vitamin D. I need to go get my bloodwork done so I can get my baseline levels. To date, I only took 3 of the 50k i/u (once a week) to be safe. Why does the Vitamin D approach work??
3) If I would have known about the redbull / energy drink relief a long time ago, that would have prevented a thousand headaches! What ingredient in the redbull does the magic? If I feel a headache coming on, all I need is about 8 ounces of redbull and it fades away. Is it possible to just take a daily Taurine supplement as pain prevention?? The Dr. gave me rizatriptan, but that stuff makes me feel funky after, I hate taking it. Redbull is more effective. Also, when I drink redbull to calm down a headache, I do not get all jittery. I drank it in the middle of the night before. 5 mins to calm a headache. I would have never figured that out without finding this website!
4) How do you make the headaches go away forever?
Lastly, I am really glad the list of recommended Dr’s is pinned on this forum. I will be setting up an appointment with one of them. Thanks, Dave
