Hemicrania Continua.. How's it Found..

Hemicrania continua is a migraine, or headache, that continually hurts. There's no migraine relief to be had.

It's pretty rare, and not many doctors, or even headache specialist will even think to make the connection. For some reason, we had never heard a doctor mention that word, until we went to our last headache specialist. Odd isn't it, after 15 years. There's a simple migraine treatment to give to see if you respond to it.

My wife has been to headache specialists, and pain management doctors, and give them her migraine symptoms, and all have told her she suffers from chronic daily migraines, or chronic daily headaches with migraines to top that.

Although she gave them her symptoms such as drooping eye, runny nose, and so forth.

But no preventives helped, and each doctor treated her with basically the same migraine treatment.

The last headache specialist she went to, within a half hour had her never ending pain narrowed down to hemicrania continua, chronic migraines(which she has been treated for),or occipital neuralgia, which is a common cause of headache.

We are going to address this headache on the next page. Many headache sufferers, suffer from chronic daily headaches or migraines, and need help.

The reason I think that there's not much said about these two possibilites of chronic daily headaches is because the most common reason, hands down, is the overuse of pain medicine, and most doctors think this may be the reason of the headaches.

If one is using pain medicine on a daily bases, one will start to have daily headaches,(rebounds) and maybe migraines. One has to stop, and get on preventive medicine or natural relief to help their migraines. This last headache specialist addressed our questions like this.

Migraines are normal for many people, believe it or not. But when you suffer from pain all of the time, that's not normal, and needs to be corrected.

In other words trace down the cause, and treat it, and that my friend can be time consuming.

How do you know if hemicrania continua is to blame for your daily headache, or migraines?

The pain is on one side with no pain free time, and are never ending. They hurt all of the time. Sometimes the pain will be moderate, and at other times it hurts like crazy. (severe)

This will be easy for you to diagnose.

Like we said above about my wife, if ones eyelid droops, or constricts, their nose is congested or is runny on the side of their head that is affected, eye is red, or one may have to wipe the tears away, at least think hemicrania continua. Hemicrania continua is a rare type of chronic daily headache, but can be successfully treated. How's this form of headache treated?

Although the cause is not known, the treatment, when the symptoms above are present, "which is considered a diagnostic test" is with indomethacin. It's a a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. (Triptans, and other abortive medications will not have any affect on hemicrania continua).

Side effects of Indomethacin.

This is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug. My wife's doctor said that it's only prescribed for gout, and hemicrania continua now days. It is inexpensive to. This medicine is hard on your stomach, so be careful while taking it. The dosage is between 50, and 200 mg a day.

The bottom line is, headache specialists have so many diagnosis to make, this one skips their mind, or they just don't think to start with this simple test, and eliminate it first, because there are so many causes of migraines.

But many people may be having chronic headaches, and are suffering needlessly because of having a wrong diagnose. Below are some sites that have more information on hemicrania continua.

{Information on your daily migraines}