Environmental chemicals
It can happen as you arrive home from work or start a long-awaited vacation, or even as you change from dreaming and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep to non-REM sleep. Just as you dip your brush into the pigment, a stabbing pain shoots through your eye with an intensity beyond anything else you have ever felt. Mter a long, hard workweek, you've cast aside all your cares and have planted your easel by a quiet pond where you are going to paint a relaxing scene. They are often triggered, not by tension, but by relaxation.
Histamine has long been known to playa major role in cluster headaches.' First of all, as we saw in the previous chapter, a chemical called histamine is found in alcoholic beverages and various foods, and it is also released into your bloodstream when you are exposed to any allergen. Food sensitivities have not been well studied in cluster headache, which is unfortunate, because there are good reasons for being concerned about them. You might get away with the occasional sip between clusters, but alcohol is a surefire trigger when you are in a cluster period. Any alcoholic beverage can do it; red wine is not singled out as it is in migraines. Alcohol is the only firmly established dietary trigger for cluster headaches. Cluster headaches seem to be due to inflammation and pressure in the veins inside the brain, and there may be hormonal contributors, as they strike men five times more often than women, unlike migraines, which are more common in women. You may also have an eyelid droop and narrowing of the pupil, and your nose will get runny or congested.
It will affect the same side of your head during the entire cluster, reddening the eye on that side and making it water. In a bad case, your cluster can drag on for more than a year. These headaches get their name from the fact that they occur in clusters, arriving every day-often at the same time of day-for up to three months, after which they simply vanish for months at a time.
Cluster headaches are perhaps the cruelest form of headache, not only for their intensity, but also for their timing. Be especially suspicious of solvents, such as those used for painting or cleaning, formaldehyde, ammonia, pesticides, and diesel exhaust. A useful clue comes from timing of the headache, which usually begins between one and four hours after exposure. If you get a headache at work that goes away when you are home over the weekend, the reason might not be stress; it might be a chemical exposure. Tyramine is found in aged cheeses, sour cream, wine, beer, liver, fermented sausages, pickled herring, broad beans, chocolate, coffee, licorice, pickles, sauerkraut, salted or pickled herring, lox, raisins, canned figs, and yeast. Tyramine is a chemical that leads to headaches in some people, especially those taking antidepressants called MAO inhibitors, sold under the brand names Parnate (tranylcypromine) and Nardil (phenelzine).
Low-fat vegetarian foods let you | Try the simple guidelines below for three | If fatty toppings are your nemesis | See guidelines on how to check your iron | It is a general indicator of risk, not | It simply means that you have less cholesterol | Even small deviations from a vegetarian | You can substitute any equivalent activity | As the pain intensified, she feared she might | It lasts for anywhere from four hours | Of this group, seventy-eight recovered completely | A headache kicks in, and eventually the lights | The key is to be careful in avoiding | This occasionally happens, and in fact, some | Red wine does seem to be among the | The factory was founded by Dr. James Baker | Surgeons used to puzzle over the fact | As a naturally occurring plant, it cannot | When they did occur, a dose of ginger | All of these are pain-safe foods | It drops / quickly just before her period | But men benefit from the same diet change | Avoid the common trigger foods completely | Acupuncture has been helpful for | One-half milliliter of the lidocaine solution | Doctors may recommend antinausea medications | Environmental chemicals
