Migraine Medicine Can Become Addictive
Posted on: Tuesday, 23 December 2008, 10:22 CST
Careful migraine sufferers: overusing painkillers can hurt migraine patients, causing worse headaches that can require further medication.
Taking care of migraines is important. However, it is more important to use migraine-preventing medicines to avoid the painkiller rut Rena Cerbone fell into.
"It was a double-edged sword," Cerbone, 41, of Montclair, N.J., says. “I was taking Fiorinal on a daily basis just to function."
Luckily for the majority of patients, migraines are not very common. Studies imply that a third of migraine sufferers are candidates for prevention medications. However, only 10 percent take them.
Having a dependence on painkillers for a few days a week can hint to overuse.
"Most people outside the specialty community are not aware of the concept," said Dr. Stephen Silberstein of Thomas Jefferson University.
"I think there's an epidemic in the U.S. of patients having frequent headaches, taking their pain pills over and over again," and winding up in more pain.
Overusing any kind of medication can trigger a rebound headache after it is over.
Unfortunately for recurrent migraine sufferers, the brain becomes more receptive to pain and they get worse. If it lasts for 15 days or more a month, it's a chronic migraine or "transformed migraine." Dr. Richard Lipton of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine says some statistics infer there are 5 million chronic migraine sufferers.
"Chronic migraine is a condition we should be trying to prevent," says Lipton, who also heads New York's Montefiore Headache Center. Lipton studied if specific medicines are connected to this chronic pain.
The study followed 8,200 episodic migraine sufferers for one year. They noted that 2.5 percent developed a state of chronic migraine. Those who took drugs like Percocet, or Fiorinal, were most likely to become worse, said Lipton and his colleagues.
Several patients will require narcotics or barbiturates to treat their migraines, especially for chronic ones, Lipton admits. However, "the reality is they're overused" in migraines, he states, warning that patients who need these medications should limit themselves to weekly doses.
Getting yourself off migraine medication is still very difficult. Cerbone employed numerous attempts to quit before she located a migraine specialist who eliminated her prescription painkiller completely and put her on a daily prevention medication. It’s working very well, she says.
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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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User Comments (1)
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Posted by Arabella on 12/27/2008, 13:08 This is an issue of medication overuse, NOT addiction. Patients who take medications too frequently for their pain may develop a dependence and medication overuse headache, but that is NOT addiction. Get your terminology straight if you want to write about such things. People with Migraines have enough problems without articles and headlines such as this one adding the potential stigma of addiction. |
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