Migraine and medicine question.?

Question

I have to take more than four tylenol just to help, not stop, a migraine. I cant stand that. I wish there was somthing I could just take to relieve the pain. Ive been on two different migraine preventatives and neither help. One was immetrex and i cant remeber the other. The only thing that honestly helps is the pain killers my mother occasionally gives me, pot or going to sleep. ANY HELP PLEASE.

Answer 1

First, four Tylenol is too many. It's time and not the extra tablets that work. There's a plateau effect with the drug, and anything over a gram at a time puts you at risk of adverse effects without being any more useful for pain relief.
Second, Imitrex (sumatriptan) is an abortive drug, not a preventative one. You should try another triptan or two before giving up on them, and if you have headaches as often as twice a week, you should try a real preventative drug, and expect it to cut your migraines roughly in half (and again you will have to have dosage-adjustment periods with each drug you try and you may need to try several to find what's right for you).
Third, you need better analgesics other acute treatments, including but not limited to pharmacologic ones.
And finally you should have a review of when you get the headaches and probably make some adjustments in lifestyle. Discuss these with your doctor.

Answer 2

Excedrin Migraine and Excedrin Extra Strength are identical having 250 mg of aspirin, 250 mg of acetaminophen, and 65 mg of caffeine. I have found of the OTC medications they are very effective in aborting occasional headaches. However, if you have frequent headaches, any OTC medication, and many prescription abortive medications will cause analgesic rebound headaches or even chronic daily headache syndrome, due to medication overuse. When you can, the best method for relieving headaches is relaxation, in a darkened room with no sound or only soft relaxing music, and a cool compress over the forehead and eyes. If you want to add the OTC analgesic this may work better, but often plain acetaminophen is fine. Also if you have frequent headaches it is usually beneficial to takee the time to see a person who works with headaches, as they can try to give you a medication to prevent the headaches. Prevention is much better than treating the headaches.

Answer 3

Can you tell your doctor about the things you've taken that have helped? Ideally you could tell your doctor and he or she would know that you respond to these stronger medications and will consider that as an option.
Whatever you do, don't continue taking twice the safe dose of tylenol at a time. Acetaminophen can ruin your liver and is probably one of the worst things you can take too much of.
Find a pain clinic, a migraine referal or support group and hopefully they can point you in the direction of a supportive and understanding doctor.

Answer 4

sometimes migraines should be taken seroius maybe you are not seeing a really good doctor...head specialist...my husband had the same problem just awhile ago and was given floricet some strong stuff makes you feel drugged more than heal so instead of battleing migraines and headaches his doctor had authorized him to get a cat scan and ekg...very important...for him since he had migraine for over 25 yrs...

Answer 5

There's a new development in migraine therapy:
http://www.neurologyreviews.com/feb04/nr_feb04_foramen.html

Answer 6

Headache is a pain in the head, scalp or neck.
Headaches can be caused by minor problems
like eyestrain, lack of coffee or more serious reasons
like head injury, brain tumors, encephalitis and
meningitis. Taking painkillers continuously can
have harmful side effects, so it is better to
modify your lifestyle. More information available at

Answer 7

Please talk to you Doctor about a migraine prevention medication. I'm on Topamax. That was the first one I was given and it helps me. And during cycles Relpax helps.

http://www.topamax.com
http://www.relpax.com