headaches with ms?

[looloo21]

is having a bad headache a symptom of multiple sclerosis? it seems like they are worse at night too.. any opinions?

[Tracka27]

Hi all
I'm waking up every morning for 3/5 days with headache which gets better through out the day .
It puzzles me what is causing this so I shall as my neurologist next month and keep you posted .

Tracey

[Sparkysarah]

I went through a period of severe headaches for about 3 months and when I was dx's asked my neuro about this. He said emphatically that the headaches were not connected to MS and that it was probably due to extreme stress or an ongoing virus.

Everything calmed down and since I have been on Gabapentin I have only had about one a month normally premenstrual time so....I am inclined to think my neuor was right.

It is one of the tough things to understand..what is MS related and what are just normal everyday symptoms that everyone gets.

Anyhow they stop soon...I found that lavender rollerballs helped putting on the temples and jsut trying to relax as much as possible.

Cheers for now and Ren has some good suggestions

Love Sarah x

[rendean]

Regarding the headache issue. I agree with Twopack that the general population has many headaches and a lot of them due to rebound headaches from taking too many analgesics in too short a time period.

My first neurologist , whom I  was sent to for new onset headaches accompanied by tingling in my left arm, called a duck a duck when he told me 5+ years ago I had MS, even before the first MRI. The first MRI  was not a slam-dunk , neither was the 5 day in-patient stay to evaluate my falling and splitting my head open.  It took 5 years to get a solid dx due to the McDonald criteria and dissemination in space and time...but he DID know what he was talking about.

I guess my advice is ...a headache may be usual symptom among a great deal of people but don't panic and think because you have a headache, you have MS. My headaches (classified as migraines with aura and neurological involvement) were probably 1 in a 1000 as far as odds go in having an association to MS.  If you have any doubt , keep a timeline of your headache and any triggers (alcohol consumption, aged cheeses,  sulfites, chocolate, etc). this would be immensely helpful to your treating physician .

Ren

[twopack]

I'm not sure if headaches are associated with MS.  I do know that a lot of people here seem to complain about them.  Then again, headaches are very common in the general population.

I don't think headaches come from brain lesions though Mike because the brain itself doesn't have any pain receptors.  That's why brain surgeons can have patients awake to help guide their surgery after the skin and skull are opened.  (Probably too much information.)

Headaches more often come from dilated blood vessels, tense muscles, or pressure from swelling against other structures inside the tight box called our head.

Mary

[Mike_Shuswap]

I get headaches all the time.

I believe this is a symptom of MS in my case.

Think about it (but not too hard, you don't want to get a headache lol), if you have brain lesions, couldn't they cause headaches? I think they could.

I take tramacet as required for headache relief. My headache frequency seems to be quite a bit less now that I'm on gabapentin, but sometimes i still need the tramacet.

I often wake up with a headache that goes away on its own. Maybe laying down causes something to promote headaches, I don't know.

I don't think they'd use headaches to help diagnose MS...but I could be wrong.

Mike