Posted by Ueli (195.162.167.253) on July 02, 2000 at 08:36:53:
People here are always talking about rebound headaches, but IMHO we should forget about this term.
It applies to people taking lots of (mostly OTC) pain meds against petty headaches. They get sort of addicted and withdrawal symptoms tend to be the same sort of headaches the meds were taken against, some sort of vicious circle.
Cluster attacks are triggered, either by the naturally oscillating brain chemicals or by an external trigger. If we use an abortive, re-triggering is inhibited for some time, but not indefinitely. This inhibition time is about 20-30 minutes for oxygen, 2 hours for Imitrex shots, 6-8 hours for Amerge. (Amerge should be called a trigger inhibitor rather than an abortive. It must be taken about an hour before an expected attack to be effective.)
So if you get another attack some time after aborting one, it is just that: Another attack, and nothing to do with rebound.
It is possible that an abortive pushes the next attack past its expected time.
But occasionally, after the abortive wears off, the same attack flares up again, being re-triggered by the same cause.
To this my own experience: I can abort an attack triggered by MSG with 5-10 min of O2. But 20-30 min later the MSG takes over again and I have to go back to the O2. This continues for 2 or 3 hours, until the MSG is degraded enough.
I could be wrong, start picking at me :-)
Ueli