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Articles

Plain-language articles on migraine, cluster headache, medication-overuse headache, nerve blocks and prevention — each written from the primary literature and the ICHD-3 diagnostic criteria rather than summarized from other websites.

Headache types and diagnosis

Treatments and procedures

Prevention and triggers

Getting care in St. Louis

  • Why oxygen fails for some people with cluster headache

    Most oxygen failures in cluster headache are delivery failures — wrong mask, wrong flow rate, or a cylinder that isn’t where the attack is. Check those before concluding you’re a non-responder.

  • High-flow oxygen for cluster headache: what the evidence shows

    In a randomized trial published in JAMA, 100% oxygen at 12 L/min aborted cluster attacks in 78% of cases at 15 minutes, against 20% for air. It is first-line, and it does not treat migraine.

  • Medication-overuse headache: when the treatment becomes the cause

    Acute headache medication taken above 10–15 days a month, depending on the drug, can convert episodic headache into a daily pattern sustained by the treatment itself. It is common and reversible.

  • Is your headache coming from your neck?

    Cervicogenic headache is provoked by neck position, stays on one side, and lacks the throbbing and nausea of migraine. A diagnostic block tells you whether the neck is really the generator.

  • Occipital neuralgia or migraine?

    Occipital neuralgia is sharp and electric, runs from the base of the skull upward, and comes with scalp tenderness so marked that brushing your hair hurts. A nerve block settles the question.

  • Migraine or tension-type headache?

    Tension-type headache is bilateral, pressing, mild to moderate, and not made worse by walking up stairs. If routine activity makes it worse, or there is nausea, it is migraine.

  • Is it a sinus headache or a migraine?

    Most self-diagnosed and doctor-diagnosed sinus headaches are migraine. Facial pain, nasal congestion and weather sensitivity are all migraine features — and antibiotics do nothing for them.

  • Migraine or cluster headache? How to tell the difference

    Cluster headache is strictly one-sided, peaks in minutes and lasts 15–180 minutes; migraine runs 4–72 hours. The behavior during an attack separates them faster than any scan.