Headache and Drug Relation
It is nearly inevitable to take painkillers when you have a headache. Medication is the most commonly known and used method in migraine treatment. To decrease the frequency of attacks, it is tried to be treated with pain killers during attacks and medications used on daily basis. In headache treatment, painkillers become ineffective or the frequency of it increases over the years.
Being desperate to cure headaches, doctors try using cortisone. Although cortison or corticosteroid treatment has positive effect in the beginning, it increases the severity of pain in the long term and leaves the patient no choice but use it.
Story of a Patient, Who is an Architect and Continuously Uses Drugs
“ I have had headache as far as I’ve known myself since my secondary school years. This has affected my work performance has been affected so much in my life. I neither was able to go to school nor prepare for the exam or went to work. Even if I managed to go to work, I couldn’t hide trying to do the work in pain and I could only use half of my performance at work. I try to live with pain and medication but I want to get rid of the medication as well. I don’t think there is any salvation from pain but I want to get rid of medication.
The most serious treatment I had was with a professor who specialized in headache 4 years ago. He told me that I used too much painkillers and prescribed me 2 medications. One of them was a cardiac and the other one was an epilepsy medication. They seemed to reduce the frequency of my migraine attacks in the beginning, but they didn’t work. I am still on these drugs. You are right, they don’t work. You ask the reason why I can’t discontinue the medication. I can’t do it. When I reduce the dose of these medications, I can’t tolerate the pain. I start to have constant pain, so I have to take them.
Not only the medication, I had needle treatment as well. I was inserted needles in my head and neck and had acupuncture and bloodletting at last. I considered having operation and searched for some information about it and found out that it had some risks as there were some patients who didn’t recover following the operation. I can cope with suffering from pain 2-3 times a week, but I only want to get rid of having to use medication.”
The most fundamental problem of migraine treatment is the inability to find the causes of the disease. The other problem is that the doctors don’t follow up patients in the long term so they don’t have any observation of patients’ progress. If only they followed up patients in the long term, many patients wouldn’t have used these medications so easily.
As a result, there are so many doctors who are not willing to apply a treatment which seems to be effective in the beginning but doesn’t have any effect on the pain and even makes it worse over the years and leaves no choice but leaves the patient no choice but to use the drugs. Unfortunately, medicine based on statistics so called ‘Medicine based on Evidence’ blind their eyes.
Speaking for myself, I am very happy to have left medication treatment for 11 years. In the 14 years of my previous professional life, I didn’t like prescribing so much medication and limited the treatment of my patients with fewer medication and I was a doctor which medicine companies didn’t like, so my conscience is clear. Why would I prescribe medications to my patients, which didn’t help my headache or I didn’t use myself?