Rizatriptan question
Hello all — I saw a migraine specialist recently who diagnosed chronic migraines. I’m not convinced though — I get frequent headaches (pretty much daily), but most of the time they’re relatively manageable (2 Advil as needed every 4 hrs, 6 max in a day). It doesn’t eliminate the headache, but it’s less painful. I don’t have aura, light sensitivity or sound sensitivity. That’s not to say I want to go to a metal concert when my head hurts, but light/sounds are not debilitating.
About 10% of the time Advil does not help. The doc prescribed Rizatriptan, and I have taken it as prescribed. It seems to help somewhat, but the headaches still linger sometimes.
My question is — is rizatriptan known to help with non-migraine headaches? Would it have any impact on, say, a tension headache? If anyone can help me on this, I’d appreciate it. Doc wants me to do Botox treatments, but I’m not on board seeing as I’m not totally convinced these are migraines. Any insight on this would be so helpful!
Thanks,
Caroline
Hi Chealy,
I used to get a lot of tension headaches, as well as migraines. As I get almost no warning, no aura, etc. I often found it difficult to distinguish between the two. For me, I decided if it's bilateral, often slow to come on, not pulsing pain then it's probably a 'normal' headache which often responds well to Paracetamol. Otherwise, one dose of a triptane usually does the trick.
Often I found that one med didn't work, so it must be the other sort of attack and the other med will fix it. This has worked well for me for a long time, although nowadays my tension headaches have disappeared and nobody knows why.
Normal pain killers for me have almost no effect on a migraine and triptanes did nothing for my tension headaches.
Regards,
Peter.
