If you have frequent, severe headaches, you may be tempted to take pain medicine in advance – even every day – to stave them off. But this strategy can backfire badly. The pills can eventually cause more headaches than they cure.
When you take pain medicine daily, even if it’s just an over-the-counter remedy, your body can gradually become accustomed to it. You may not realize that you’ve been dosing yourself too often until, for some reason, you miss a day. Then your pain medicine will wear off and your head will start hurting again.
You may think you just have an especially persistent headache, but the recurring pain actually is a symptom of medication withdrawal. The more often your head hurts, the more often you take your pain medicine. It becomes a vicious cycle.
If your head hurts at least 15 days a month, you may be having rebound headaches – especially if you’re taking pain relievers for your headaches more than twice a week.
The usual suspects
Almost any medication that provides prompt relief of headache symptoms can contribute to rebound headaches, including simple pain relievers such as aspirin, acetaminophen (Tylenol, others) and ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin, others).
Caffeine, a common ingredient in many pain medications, also is strongly linked to rebound headaches.
When to treat a headache
It’s fine to take a pain reliever for the occasional headache. If you have migraines, you may need to keep prescription medication on hand for use when your symptoms occur.
The important thing is to take headache medication – prescription or nonprescription – only when your head is actually hurting.
Preventive medicine will not work on rebound headaches. The only way to stop rebound headaches is to stop taking the pain medication that’s causing them.
Rebound headache generally has the following clinical characteristics:
• chronic daily headache for at least six months
• medication gives only transient or partial relief
• headache is present upon waking
• no medical cause for the headache;
• history of taking pain relievers daily or almost daily
• the headache “rebounds” as the last dose of medication wears off.
Patients who do not have an underlying headache disorder and who take large doses of a painkiller on a regular basis for other pain issues are usually not at risk for developing rebound headache.
Treatment
Obviously the best treatment is to avoid this situation in the first place. Talk to your chiropractor about natural treatments for your headache. Chiropractic treatment effects can be long lasting without rebound symptoms.
Once rebound headache has occurred, up to 80 per cent of patients will have their condition resolve simply by discontinuing usage of the offending drug.
Depending on the drug causing rebound headache, the weaning-off process may vary. Aspirin, acetaminophen and caffeine can be discontinued suddenly, but the patient can expect a worsening of the rebound headache over the next several days, with peak severity in the first week or so, followed by a gradual lessening for up to three months.
As some medications can not be stopped suddenly, it is best to talk to the doctor who prescribed the medication before halting use.
Keep in mind that once the rebound headaches are resolved, the underlying problem that caused the headache in the first place will still be present.
Chiropractors offer several different means of treating headache without the risk of developing a rebound headache.
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