In spite of the fact that they are pretty unusual cluster headaches are regarded as being as amongst the most painful conditions that you can experience. Fortunately they are fairly unusual and, while other frequently painful headaches like migraines strike approximately ten percent of the population, less than one third of one percent suffer from cluster headaches. A lot of people describe cluster headaches as far worse than migraines and some women describe them as also being more painful than giving birth.

Cluster headaches, which frequently present as a stabbing pain behind one eye or close to the area of the temple, are distinguished by the fact that they often attack at regular times. In other words they have a tendency to occur at a specific time of the day, last for an hour or less, and then return at the same time the next day with this pattern repeating itself for a number of weeks or even months. In addition, cluster headaches tend to strike without any warning and differ from migraines which are frequently preceded by symptoms like flashing lights.

Precisely why we get cluster headaches remains something of a mystery although some scientists believe that they are caused by an abnormality in the hypothalamus, which is the gland that controls the body’s biological clock and is affected by changes in the length of the day as well as a number of other things.

Another striking difference between migraines and cluster headaches is the gender of sufferers. With migraine headaches approximately three quarters of the some 28 million sufferers in the US alone are women and just one quarter are men. When it comes to cluster headaches however approximately 8 out of 10 sufferers are men.

Standard treatments for normal or migraine headaches are generally useless for cluster headaches and such once miracle drugs as aspirin and ibuprofen have little if any effect.

One treatment that has been shown to be fairly effective is inhaling pure oxygen. This treatment cannot of course be used until after the onset of the headache but the inhalation of pure oxygen for a few minutes will frequently ease the headache considerably.

Another relatively good treatment is that of taking a class of drugs known as triptans that are regularly used for the treatment of migraines. Here however the drug had to be administered in the form of a nasal spray to be effective and this can be far from easy as cluster headaches can sometimes produce swelling within the nasal passages. When this is the case then the drug can also be effective if it is given by injection. Once more this is a treatment that has to be given after the headache has appeared.

Because cluster headaches strike with such regularity it would be useful to have some sort of preventative medication that could be taken regularly just before a headache hits. Unhappily however because the condition is so rare and is not at all well understood we have very little information about which drugs may or may not be effective as preventative treatment.

In severe cases surgery to block nerves and other neurological procedures can be carried out but this is very much a last resort and is not always terribly effective.