Medication-Overuse Headaches

Your name: Your e-mail address: Your friend's e-mail addresses:

(separate multiple addresses with comma)
Indicates required field
Message (limit 100 characters)
Enter answer below:

(Why the math? It protects against spam)
=
Send
Cancel
Your message has been successfully sent!

Medications that are prescribed for treating conditions other than headaches sometimes cause headaches as a side effect.

• One example is nitroglycerin, which is prescribed for people with heart disease. This medication enlarges (dilates) blood vessels, an event that can trigger a headache.
• Other medications known to cause headaches in some individuals include birth control pills, nifedipine, indomethacin, cimetidine, resperine, and theophylline.

If you are taking any medications -- prescription medications, nonprescription medications, or herbal products -- and suspect that they are causing your headaches, note the following information during your next five to seven headache attacks:

• time that you take the medication
• time that you experience the headache

Headache Diary

After tracking this information, if you notice a correlation between your medication and headaches, consult your physician.

Fluctuating daily headaches may occur as a result of chronic use of certain headache medications, caffeine, or both.

• Ergotamine medications that are prescribed to relieve the pain of migraine headaches may produce rebound headaches, sometimes referred to as ergotamine-abuse headaches.
• Daily, or near-daily, overuse of common nonprescription medications, such as aspirin or acetaminophen, may lead to analgesic-abuse headaches.

Treating medication-overuse headaches requires that use of the medication causing the headaches be stopped completely; moreover, the medication must be avoided for 8 to 12 weeks.

• Some patients successfully discontinue medications on an outpatient basis.
• While some of these individuals are able to stop using headache medications abruptly, others need to lower the dose gradually over several weeks.
• Other patients require hospitalization during the withdrawal process.
• Over several weeks, medication-overuse headaches shift from a chronic and daily occurrence to a sporadic event. Ultimately, the frequency of headaches returns to the level that existed before medication abuse.