All doctors and researchers who deal regularly with migraines are, in the end, looking for migraine cures. They’ve discovered a great deal of information about how migraines work in the first place, not to mention what triggers them. Teaching people how to eliminate these triggers isn’t a cure, exactly, but at least it’s a step in the right direction. However, migraines still afflict people, a great many people in fact, so migraine medications are still another area of research that is going full steam.
The first types of medications generally given for migraines are the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDS. These are more familiar to people as acetaminophen, aspirin, ibuprofen and naproxen. They are generally over-the-counter drugs, so people whose migraines tend to be mild can self-prescribe, and sometimes nip the headaches in the bud. Occasionally, when combined with caffeine, these can bring not just migraine relief but also relief from the nausea that tends to accompany this condition.
The next step in migraine medications is taken when more powerful drugs are needed for stronger headaches. One of the effective types of medications for mid-line headaches is the triptans. These don’t just work on the headache, but help the accompanying nausea and over-sensitivities as well. The main version of this sort of drug is Sumatriptan. Another line of migraine defense for really severe headaches can be opiates, but doctors prefer not to prescribe these if they can avoid it, to prevent potential addiction.
Other treatments involve combining different drugs as medication for migraines, so a drug like Fioricet would have butalbital (a barbiturate) with aspirin, paracetamol (acetaminophen) and caffeine. Severe headaches that don’t respond to drug treatments, called refractory migraines, are sometimes treated intravenously with drugs like Decadron, Phergan, Keppra, and so on. Intravenous treatment aims at rebalancing the internal fluids and electrolytes as well as easing the pain.
In many ways, the common migraine is not common at all, and even after years of research its origins and mechanism remain at least partly mysterious. For this reason, treatment can be somewhat hit-and-miss, and it’s not always easy for doctors to tell which migraine medications are going to have an effect on any individual’s headache. But research continues to be done, and many strides have been made. And now at least there are several available choices of treatments to try, with the hope of greater relief.
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