Although orgasm is usually a pleasurable and happy activity for most people, it can be painful for others who find that it starts coital headaches. For these people, sexual activity can actually cause these coital headache attacks.
Medically speaking, a headache, or cephalalgia, is a symptom of a number of different conditions of the head and sometimes the neck too. They can be classified into two main groups: primary or idiopathic, and symptomatic, although there are other ways of classifying them too; for instance by severity or by area.
Put simply, primary headaches have a known or unknown cause, whereas symptomatic headaches are often the result of injury. Primary headaches include: migraine, tension headaches, cluster headaches and coital headaches, amongst others.
Coital headaches, also called coital cephalalgia or sexual headaches, is a rare, but painful form of headache that begins in the nape of the neck during sexual intercourse, but before climax. It can happen in all conditions where climax is the expected result. The pain can move to behind the eyes and can then become even worse. Typically the pain will last from a few minutes to an hour or so, but some cases have been known to continue for days in extreme examples.
Men are three times more at risk to coital headaches than women and the age groups most at risk are those between 20 and 25 and 30 and 44. Nobody really knows why this should be. Coital headaches afflict about one percent of the population, although this figure could be a lot higher due to people being embarrassed to talk about it.
Moreover, coital headaches are benign, which means that they cause no long-term ill effects, so far as doctors know. It seems that people taking sexual stimulants, like Viagara, are about 10% more at risk to a coital headache. In deed, besides the obvious, temporary pain, the worst effects of coital headaches are differing levels of dizziness, confusion and stiffness of neck.
However, it is still worth while seeing a doctor though, especially in the early cases, just to rule out the more serious causes of headaches, such as brain tumours and blood clots. However, the doctor can do very little to help by way of treatment. He could suggest a complete abstention from any kind of sexual activity for a period varying from days to weeks or he may recommend trying taking medication a short time before sexual foreplay commences.
Some of the headache medications that can be taken are indomethacin, imitrex, zomig and propranolol, although if the headaches persist, your doctor could suggest daily preventive medication. People suffering from frequent coital headaches may obtain a positive response to migraine preventive medications, such as beta blockers or verapamil. Non-steroidal anti inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) such as ibuprofen may also be helpful. Coital headaches and migraines are also more likely to occur if a person is in poor physical health.
Nevertheless, the cure for coital headaches for many sufferers can be as simple as bringing your weight up or down to the norm for your size. Coital headaches can also be cured in some sufferers by an increased level of exercise, although this may trigger exertion headaches in some people.
Now the good news is that most headaches related to sexual activities are not at all serious in nature. In deed, research actually states that orgasm can prevent headaches and even migraine in some cases. This means that for some adults, refusing sex may actually be the cause of their headache in the first place.
If you suffer from migraine or headaches, you ought to definitely visit our website on Stopping Headaches.