Pain medication can be helpful in the short term to treat a headache/migraine attack

Pain medications that are taken as required for headaches and migraines can be helpful in the short term but they don’t actually do anything to prevent the next headache or migraine attack from occurring and also they can actually contribute if taken too often to contributing to further headaches or migraines which is obviously not what we want, we want to be preventing and decreasing your headaches and migraines  from occurring so how does this occur and also how can you prevent this from occurring that’s what we’re going through today.

Hi, I’m Dr. Beth, osteopath here from  Headache Solutions, so pain medications that we take as required are things like pandels neurophenes tryptone medications like max salts immigrants roll packs. You’ve also got your medications like your panadeines or your Panadeine thoughts and those sorts of things so as I said medications are taken as required when you’ve got a headache or migraine, and so with these medications it’s actually recommended that you only take them between one to three times a week maximum. Maximum per week in terms of number of days, so the reason why is that if we take them more than this per week then we can end up with something called a rebound headache and signs and symptoms of a rebound headache are things like waking up with headaches or migraines in the morning and having an increased number of headaches and migraines as time goes on so we can start with headaches or migraines that were infrequent or episodic and then as time goes on as we’re taking more and more medication then we can actually end up getting headaches and migraines on a daily basis as I day waking up with them feeling like we need to take medication then as the medication wears off then the pain comes back so we take more medication and then we end up with this vicious cycle that the pain perpetuates and continues on so it’s actually our body saying that we’re going into almost like a slight withdrawal from the medication needing more medication and we’re creating accidentally more pain, so the best thing to do is actually to prevent these rebound headaches from occurring, as I said we want to try to limit the amount of as required pain medication that we take to maximum one to three times per week to try to prevent these rebound headaches from occurring because nobody wants to increase the amount of pain that they are experiencing. If however, you are experiencing rebound headaches so you have noticed that across the years that you have been taking more and more pain medication and you think that you’ve accidentally fallen into this cycle, the best thing to do is actually to stop pain medication and almost go cold turkey, this is what research suggests, is the best method to do now to most people they go this sounds absolutely horrible I couldn’t live without my pain medication because my headaches or my migraines will get worse. Now absolutely it does sound horrible to people who are suffering with horrible headaches or migraines but unfortunately the pain medication and that pain cycle is feeding into one another and so it’s actually better to get a clear picture as to what pain medication is accidentally feeding and what your baseline actually is and for most people when they come off their pain medication then they find they’re actually experiencing less headaches and less migraines than they thought that they we’re experiencing which is great. We do also find and research does back up with this that people who are experiencing rebound headaches actually get worse treatment outcomes than others because they are experiencing this phenomenon so it’s definitely better as I said to prevent these rebound headaches from occurring but if you are experiencing them to certainly decrease those rebound headaches as I said because we want the best treatment outcomes not the worst treatment outcomes because we want to be getting rid of those headaches and migraines so as I said maximum one to three days with your as required pain medication, but with your pain medication then it is something that only treats acute attacks so it’s only treating your symptoms it’s not actually treating the underlying cause it does nothing to prevent the next attack from occurring, so we want to be aiming to prevent your headaches and migraines. We don’t want to be having to treat pain when it’s occurring so that’s what we’re aiming for we want to be aimed for prevention so it’s better to treat the cause than to treat the symptoms. So, if you’re curious as to what might be treated causing your headaches migraines, we’ve got a questionnaire up above that goes through all different areas that might be contributing to your headaches and migraines. So, if you’re curious and you’re not sure what’s contributing to your headaches and migraines, fill it out and we’ll help you identify what could be causing or contributing to your headaches and migraines.

If you’ve got any questions or queries drop them below we’ll get back to you and if you’ve got any questions or queries in terms of whether you think that rebound headaches might be a factor for you, or you’re not sure and you’re a bit confused definitely leave us a comment, send us a message and let us know this something that you certainly don’t want to be contributing to your pain and as I said, pain medication anyway is only helping this attack you’re suffering at the moment. It’s certainly not affecting any future attacks and that’s what we want to be doing. We want to be helping to prevent future attacks and to decrease your overall sense of well-being. So, I hope you found it useful and we certainly won’t be preventing those rebound headaches.

Thanks guys, I’ll catch you next time.