Painkillers could be CAUSING your headache and not curing it

By ROGER DOBSON
Last updated at 10:19 PM on 10th December 2011

When suffering a headache, we reach for the painkillers, then get on with the day. Yet if new research is to be believed, in many cases these pills could be the cause of the problems rather than a cure.

A condition known as medication overuse headache (MOH) is thought to affect one million Britons, about six per cent of headache patients seen by GPs each year.

‘In some specialised UK headache clinics, up to 90 per cent of patients may have chronic migraine complicated by MOH,’ says Dr Nicholas Silver, consultant neurologist at The Walton Centre for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Liverpool.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2072468/Painkillers-CAUSING-headache-curing-it.html#ixzz1gVDskYEJ

I saw a special nurse at Sandwell clinic, it' fair to say she was obsessed with MOH, and seemed to have decided within minutes that this was the cause of my migraines. She wrote to my GP telling him not to prescribe any painkillers. Thankfully my GP is quite understanding, we gradually reduced the number of cocodamol I was taking -result I still get headaches about three times a week - not all pain is MOH!

That is true - however MOH can muddy the water when it comes to migraine patterns and painkiller often prevent the preventatives working to their full effect - so its worth trying to cut down on the OTC stuff in order to get a true picture and hopefully get to the cause and prevention rather than masking it... but sometimes you just need something to stop it hurting