What causes headaches?

This content is for educational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Read more.

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What can I do if I am taking medication for my headache but it’s getting worse?

Dr Manjit Matharu, a Consultant Neurologist at Queen Square, says there are likely 2 different possible causes of this situation: The first being the medication you are taking is not working at all hence the pain getting worse. The second possibility is a well established concept known as medication overuse headache which is a result of taking pain killing medication too frequently. The suggested solution to this is cutting down and optimising medication intake to less than 10 days per month.

Transcript
That depends on what kind of medications you've been taking. There are two types of medications. There are painkillers, or what we call acute treatments. And there are what we call preventive treatments, which are medications you take to reduce the number of headaches that you're having. If you're taking painkillers and taking them very frequently, frequently being described as taking them on 10 or more days in a month, then there's a very high likelihood that those very painkillers that you're taking to improve your headaches are in fact starting to give you more headaches. There's a paradoxical concept, but it's a very well established concept of something called medication overuse headache. You use painkillers too frequently and you get more headaches. In that situation, what you really need to do is to cut back on the painkillers that you're using. Optimise them and use them only on a maximum of 10 days per month. On the other hand, if what you're taking is preventive treatments, then it's likely that the preventive treatment you're taking right now isn't working for you. And in that case, you need to have a discussion with your doctors about changing over your medications to some other preventive treatment.

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