Painkillers make a million headaches worse

This article initially appeared in the Bellingen Courier Sun on Wednesday 20th March 2013.

Painkillers 'make a million people's headaches worse':
Acupuncture can be used for prevention.
Research from the UK

A million headache sufferers who take common painkillers on a regular basis are actually intensifying their pain by making their brains ‘immune’ to the drugs’ effects, UK doctors have recently warned. They are aggravating their symptoms by relying on medications like aspirin, paracetamol and ibuprofen on an almost daily basis. Instead of taking these over-the-counter drugs to combat symptoms when they flare up, sufferers should try treatments that help prevent headaches in the first place - including acupuncture - according to official advice from the British National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).It has recently launched a new guideline this week to help doctors better diagnose and treat different types of headache, which can be difficult to tell apart.


Dr Manjit Matharu, a consultant neurologist who helped develop the NICE guidelines, said: “Patients with frequent tension-type headaches or migraines can get themselves into a vicious cycle, where their headaches are getting increasingly worse.”Taking normal dose aspirin, paracetamol or anti-inflammatory painkillers like ibuprofen for 15 days or more a month could lead to these headaches, he said.


Taking opioids like codeine, or other powerful painkillers like triptans, ergots or combination analgesic medications for 10 days or more a month could also exacerbate headaches or migraines, he said.
Dr Matharu explained that frequent use of painkillers desensitised the brain to their effects, "and that leads to more pain". Patients who thought this was happening to them should consult their GPs about preventative medication, he said.
There was strong evidence that the drugs propranolol, topiramate and gabapentin worked to prevent migraines, he advised, but preventing tension headaches was more difficult. “Acupuncture is the only treatment that we’ve got a good evidence base for.” The eastern technique was “often not taken seriously enough”, claimed the neurologist, but trials showed it had a real beneficial effect.


Alchemy in Bellingen’s resident Acupuncturist, David Whitmore, agrees, “tension headaches usually respond quite well to acupuncture treatment. Research shows half of the patients who try acupuncture have a larger than 50% decrease in headache frequency, and in clinic I often see the severity of any remaining headaches decrease as well. For such a small rural area the residents of Bellingen shire have access to a large range of experienced and professional Acupuncturists so there is every opportunity to treat headaches naturally and successfully.”