Prophylactic drugs are prescribed on a long-term basis to prevent headaches from occurring. Most carry risk of severe side effects and habitual dependency. Both beta blockers and calcium channel blockers are heart disease drugs, prescribed to reduce the severity and frequency of migraine and cluster headaches. Beta blockers work by blocking receptors in blood vessels to prevent constriction by norepinephrine. Calcium channel blockers achieve the same effect by blocking calcium uptake into muscles surrounding blood vessel walls. Both are addictive, may lead to constipation and drowsiness, and have a melancholy list of other adverse side effects.
Antidepressants are also prescribed when tension headaches seem due to depression or anxiety. They prevent uptake of serotonin into nerve cells, thus freeing existing serotonin to function as a neurotransmitter. Curiously, one of the many adverse side effects of these drugs is to heighten motivation for suicide, the very thing the drug is supposed to prevent. (Far superior results may be achieved through behavioral medicine by using a combination of tryptophan loading and cognitive positivism, techniques #5 and #17.
Yet another prophylactic drug prescribed for cluster headaches, lithium carbonate, poses a risk of kidney damage when employed for long-term use.
Among other drugs not to take for headaches are tranquilizers or muscle relaxants. Although they provide symptomatic relief of anxiety and tension, they intensify headache pain and often increase anxiety instead of relieving it.
Women may also want to avoid oral contraceptives. Roughly, half of all women using the pill have complained of headaches after the first year. Powerful vasoconstrictors, oral contraceptives have been known to cause migraine accompanied by symptoms so severe that medical attention has been necessary. Headaches are also a common side effect of nitroglycerine and many other drugs.
1. Most drugs merely mask symptoms. Not a single drug can remove the underlying cause of most headaches, which is unresolved emotional stress.
2. Any therapy that does not use drugs offers enormous advantages over therapies mat involve drug use.
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