January 24, 2023
Top Tips on Medication to Prevent Chronic Migraine Headache
- You need to take the medicine every day.
- It is unlikely to stop migraine attacks (episodes) completely. However, the number and severity of attacks are often much reduced by a preventative medicine. It is useful for you to keep a migraine diary to monitor how well a medicine is working.
- It may take 1-3 months for maximum benefit. Therefore, if it does not seem to work at first, do persevere for a while before giving up.
- It is common practice to take one of these medicines for 4-6 months. After this, it is common to stop it to see if it is still needed. It can be restarted again if necessary.
- If a migraine attack occurs, you can still take painkillers or a triptan in addition to the preventative medicine.
- It is worth trying a different medicine if the first one you try does not help.
- Read the leaflet in the medicine packet for a list of cautions and possible side-effects.
- How do you take a triptan? You should take the first dose when the headache (pain) is just beginning to develop, but not before this stage. That is, do not take it in the aura stage if you have an aura and do not take it to prevent one from coming on. Studies have shown that they do not work as well if taken too early. Triptans taken by mouth are designed to work rapidly - within an hour or so. Injected triptans usually work in 10-15 minutes.
- After you have taken the first Triptan dose: If the triptan worked to relieve your headache but then the headache returned later, you can repeat the dose after 2-4 hours. Each triptan has a maximum daily dose that you should not exceed. This will be written on the packet. If the triptan did not work at all, a second dose is unlikely to work, so do not take a second dose. The exception to this is zolmitriptan (2.5 mg), where a second dose may be tried after two hours even if the first dose did not work. See the patient leaflet that comes in the medicine packet for details.