Combined Therapies

"After more than 20 years of cluster headaches, I have found a series of treatments that have kept them in check for the last 10 years.

I had tried all the standard drugs, from ergotamine tartrate and lithium, to intravenous Acthar, a real treat, plus most pain killers, to no avail. Oxygen push sometimes gave relief, but not all the time. My "cure", ( I am now coming off another episode), came from looking at acupuncture.

I was lucky, and went to a multidiscipline clinic, the results coming from a mix of allergy screening, acupuncture, kinesiology and chiropractic. Theoretically, the body, when in good repair, has what it takes to fight off clusters.

My course of treatment started with spinal manipulation, then went to resetting a number of the bones in my skull, esp. the plates of the skull: they do get out of sync, esp. with any head trauma, even mild bumps sometimes.

Probably the most critical component of the therapy was the allergy screening. My therapist can screen me for almost 250 environmental entities, from molds and pollens, to food groups and additives, dyes and the such. At the same time, the screening can identify deficiencies in intakes, minerals and the such. Most of these allergies are temporary in nature, but in many bodies, there are enough active allergies that even though one does not show symptoms, no runny nose or tearing eyes, one's abilities to fight off your body's problems is decimated, one gets a lot of flu and colds for example, and they might last conspicuously longer than most people's.

Once the allergies are identified, the nerve circuits are repaired, in my case by painless laser acupuncture, sometimes supplements are prescribed, and one practices abstinence of the foods and groups causing the problems, usually for 30-60 days.

The first time I had this course of treatment, I had been in episode for just over a full year, constant 8's, 9's and 10's, quite a wonderful time. I remember getting a 2 or 3 driving home, and zam.....the episode stopped, just like that.

Over the last ten years, my experience has been the same. An episode will start, average one a year, I will go through the course of treatments, and I will be out of the episode in one to three weeks. I might also note, that in my many years of trying to get a handle on CH, standard medical practice is almost totally focused on treatment of symptoms. This was the first time someone had looked at the systematic causes of CH.

Last, my practitioner also advises ongoing health practices, to wit, advoidance of most food additives, healthy diet, and some regimen of excercise.

I'll de darned if I can see any correlation between the preceeding and CH, I've had them from peak health to slovenly, but I guess this can't hurt. If you are one of the 5% who doesn't respond to standard cures or fixes, this might be an important avenue to explore.

Additionally, if you are tired of being on some of the more interesting drugs out there - some months I was up to two grand a month in drugs - this might also be an important avenue to getting your life back in order. Whichever, I wish you the best, keep trying, sooner or later, it will get better."

Last modified: 2002