Verapamil And Cluster Headaches
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I am a 47 year old male and have suffered from cluster headaches for 25 years, without any medication really helping. Someone recently recommended verapamil My doctor hadn't heard of it. Does it help, and how is it meant to be taken- daily, or only when headaches occur?

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I had chronic cluster headaches for 17 years finally one day a doctor put me on the verapamil 540 mg a day and within four weeks my headaches were gone then I reducde the verapamil to 180 mg a day and to this day I still take 180 mg per day and that was 21 years ago that I got rid of my headaches

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Yes, I take verapamil for migraines. Don't know if it works for cluster headaches, but if your doc hasn't heard of it there's at least a decent chance he also misdiagnosed you as cluster headaches vs migraine...

It is a preventative so I take it every day. For me, I'm taking 240mg SR. It is not a cure but it does reduce the frequency and severity of my symptoms.

Preventatives are all meds for other illnesses that over time evidence built up that for some people they helped with migraines. Neurologists don't know why they work, just that for some people, they do. Frankly they still don't know what happens in the brain during a migraine as there has never been much research/funding into any of the primary headache disorders. Typical preventatives include calcium-channel blockers (verapamil), beta-blockers, epilepsy meds, and certain older antidepressants. It's trial and error. What works for one patient may not for another. Also, migraines change and mutate ov time so what used to work may stop working... You have to give each med a 3 or 4 month try to tell for sure if it helps or not. I'm guessing here but from my experience there are secondary neurological symptoms and heightened sensitivity that build up when you are having constant migraines/headaches and it takes some time if the meds work for all of that other stuff to calm down.

It might not be your doc's fault he hasn't heard of it. Migraine is not taught in medical school. It was officially considered a "disease of neurotic women" until the 1980s, in the 90s they tried to pass it off as a vascular condition. It's now considered a primarily genetic neurological disease, but the neurology specialty as a whole has willfully ignored its migraine patients for the last 50 to 100 years - probably because we don't usually die of the condition so we aren't important enough for them, who cares about quality of life anyway? Even general neurologists are notorious for failing to recognize and properly treat migraine symptoms. Neurologists who specialize in headaches are much better but they are few and far between.

You could also run this by your doc: 400 mg vitamin B2(riboflavin) and 450mg magnesium citrate are supplements that studies have shown help reduce migraine headache. Again, not sure cluster vs migraine.

Good luck.

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