See, this interests me. It might not interest anyone else but I want to write it down because it is a completely unique situation. I can find no record of it ever being done except one trial that was run in incredibly low doses. And before even seeing that trial I had the idea, medicine interests me, so I suppose that makes me feel a little proud.
23 year old presents with chronic migraines with aura (also known as transformed migraines). Headaches basically every day with no known cause and a completely clean CT scan. No treatment has cleared more than a small amount of the pain and does not reduce the frequency.
Dietary and lifestyle changes make no difference.
Tried on amitryptiline but fatigue too extreme to continue with medication. Eventually (now at year 5 of headaches) they decided to try nortriptyline which generally has less fatigue and was told to take it at night. I had little faith in medicine at this point. Found that with this drug I was at the other end of the spectrum. It caused insomnia and my heart to race when doing casual physical tasks.
Changing to taking the pill in the morning eased the insomnia but in order to see if it would actually work I went to my doctor and asked for propranolol to slow my heart. They are technically both CNS depressants so in most people they would cause low BP and heart rate. In me they normalised everything. So at this point I am taking 160mg Propranolol and 75mg Nortriptyline.
Over the next few weeks I had a very noticable decline in headaches. So the constant pain I felt started changing into pain free days with a rebound headache only every two weeks or so. Only real side effects of taking these two medications in conjunction was an initial increase in appitite that subsided after a couple of weeks and dizziness upon standing that is ongoing.
I'm sure I bored everyone but it may be helpful to others in my position.
23 year old presents with chronic migraines with aura (also known as transformed migraines). Headaches basically every day with no known cause and a completely clean CT scan. No treatment has cleared more than a small amount of the pain and does not reduce the frequency.
Dietary and lifestyle changes make no difference.
Tried on amitryptiline but fatigue too extreme to continue with medication. Eventually (now at year 5 of headaches) they decided to try nortriptyline which generally has less fatigue and was told to take it at night. I had little faith in medicine at this point. Found that with this drug I was at the other end of the spectrum. It caused insomnia and my heart to race when doing casual physical tasks.
Changing to taking the pill in the morning eased the insomnia but in order to see if it would actually work I went to my doctor and asked for propranolol to slow my heart. They are technically both CNS depressants so in most people they would cause low BP and heart rate. In me they normalised everything. So at this point I am taking 160mg Propranolol and 75mg Nortriptyline.
Over the next few weeks I had a very noticable decline in headaches. So the constant pain I felt started changing into pain free days with a rebound headache only every two weeks or so. Only real side effects of taking these two medications in conjunction was an initial increase in appitite that subsided after a couple of weeks and dizziness upon standing that is ongoing.
I'm sure I bored everyone but it may be helpful to others in my position.