Cluster Headaches Symptom

Cluster headaches are more debilitating and distressing than common or classic migraine headaches. The symptoms of a cluster headache are distinct which set them apart from the rest of other headaches. Remarkably, every cluster sufferers shows similar signs.

You can feel the severe and debilitating pain behind or around the eye or temple. It's like a cool stabbing or piercing pain around the eye socket. The pain may spread from your forehead down to upper gum on the same side where the pain originates. You often feel the pulsing in the arteries if your scalp is tender.

Normally only one side of the head is affected. During a cluster, the pain stays on the same side. Even when a new cluster begins, it is uncommon for the pain to switch to the other side.

Other associated symptoms include swelling eye, excessive tears and redness in eye along with blurring, drooping of the eyelid, and twitching on the affected side. You also get nasal congestion and runny nose with your face turning flushing red.

Because the pain is so intense, you get restless. You can't sit still and often walk up and down. You find it difficult to lay down as this will increase the head pain. You want to be alone. Sometimes, the pain can be unbearable that you scream aloud and bang your head against the wall in an attempt to relieve pain.

The pain usually subsides after thirty minutes to one and a half hour. In some cases, it may go on until three hours. The headache will return later that day to repeat the cycle. Typically, in between attacks, suffers enjoy the remission period (headache-free period).

Most sufferers get several headaches on the same day, striking at the same moment each day. Cluster headaches have been known as "alarm clock headaches" as this nocturnal headache often awaken the victim at the same time during the night.

Between eighty and ninety percent of cluster headache victims suffer from episodic cluster headaches. The attacks break out in clusters lasting four to six weeks, with a remission period of five to twelve months in between clusters.

About twenty percent of cluster headache sufferers get chronic cluster headaches. Unlike episodic cluster headaches, chronic cluster headaches continues without remission periods. You can't find more than fourteen headache-free days in a year.

There have been no incidence of nausea or vomiting in cluster headaches. However, someone with cluster headaches may suffer from migraines.