Health

Headache treatments taken excessively can cause increasingly severe pain that becomes chronic.

WHY DO I HAVE MORE HEADACHES DESPITE MY MEDICATION?

Headaches (or headaches) due to abuse or excessive consumption of medication are common. If one of your treatments seems less effective, talk to your doctor before increasing the doses. The increase in the frequency of your headaches, for no obvious reason, associated with the ineffectiveness of your treatment, is not normal. Your migraine may be coupled with a headache due to medication abuse, which becomes chronic and daily (CCQ).

WHAT IS MEDICATION ABUSE?

This is the excessive use of a medication. Painkillers should not be taken every day without a prescription. Other migraine treatments should be taken as prescribed by your doctor.

WHAT IS A CHRONIC DAILY HEADACHE (CCQ)?

We talk about CCQ when headaches (cephalgia and/or migraines) occur at least 15 days a month for more than 3 months.

IS MEDICATION ABUSE COMMON?

Your case is not isolated. It is estimated that one in four or five migraine sufferers increases the doses of painkillers without medical advice, i.e. 2 to 3% of the French adult population. This represents a public health problem.

HOW TO AVOID THIS MEDICATION ABUSE?

You should avoid taking medication without medical advice. A prescribed product is adapted to a case, to a person. It is not necessarily adapted to you or to someone in your family. If you think that your treatment is not effective enough, talk to your doctor.

Do not think that the more you increase the doses of a medication, the more effective it is. Sometimes it is the opposite. Always follow the prescription and dosage. If in doubt, before making any changes, ask your doctor or pharmacist for advice.

HOW DO I KNOW IF I AM TAKING TOO MUCH MEDICATION?

If you notice that, for several months (more than 3 months), you have been taking medication for your migraine attacks more frequently than before (at least 6 to 8 times a month), talk to your doctor. Even if this treatment seems effective to you, your doctor will prescribe a more suitable treatment to reduce the attacks and the consumption of medication.

HOW CAN I STOP MY CHRONIC HEADACHES?

It all depends on how long you have had these headaches due to medication abuse. In the majority of cases, it will be difficult to reduce the dose of effective painkiller. Your doctor will advise you to implement a withdrawal. This involves slowly and gradually reducing the doses of the medication to which your body has become accustomed. This medication can be gradually replaced by another. This method, if followed properly, can be effective, provided that it is conducted by your doctor. It will most often be combined with a basic treatment that will facilitate drug withdrawal.

Finally, hypnotherapy sessions will be very useful to improve your comfort of life. Hypnosis, practiced by a health professional trained in this practice, will not eliminate the origin of your migraines, but will teach you to forget this pain in order to live with them more serenely on a daily basis.
Headaches due to drug abuse are a very disabling complication of migraine. They can have significant repercussions on your social and professional life and your quality of life in general. To avoid their occurrence, it is essential to follow the treatment of migraine attacks as prescribed by your doctor, and to prevent it if the attacks become too frequent. Keeping a personal diary of your migraine is, for this purpose, essential.