Wednesday, January 13, 2010

What Are Coital Headaches?

By Bob Jones

Although orgasm is usually an enjoyable and positive activity for most people, it can become painful for others who find that it triggers coital headaches. For these people, sexual activity can actually cause these coital headache attacks.

Technically, a headache, or cephalalgia, is a symptom of various conditions of the head and sometimes the neck too. They can be classified into two main categories: primary or idiopathic, and symptomatic, although there are other ways of classifying them too; for example by severity.

Put simply, primary headaches have a known or unknown cause, whereas symptomatic headaches are often the result of trauma. 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 type of headache that starts in the nape of the neck during sexual intercourse, but before climax. It can occur 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 it has been known to last for days in extreme cases.

It is surprising to many to discover that men are three times more likely to experience coital headaches than women and the age groups most at risk are those between 20 and 25 and 30 and 44. Doctors do not really knows why this should be. Coital headaches afflict about one percent of the population, although this number could be a lot higher because of people being embarrassed to talk about it.

Moreover, coital headaches are benign, which means that they have no long-term ill effects, as far as doctors know. It appears that people taking sexual stimulants, like Viagara, are roughly 10% more prone to a coital headache. In fact, apart from the obvious, temporary pain, the worst issues of coital headaches are differing degrees of dizziness, confusion and stiffness of neck.

However, it is still worth seeing a doctor though, especially in the early cases, just to exclude the more severe causes of headaches, such as brain tumours and blood clots. However, the doctor can do rather little to help by way of treatment. He may suggest a complete abstention from any kind of sexual activity for a period ranging from days to weeks or he may recommend trying taking medication some time before sexual foreplay begins.

Some of the headache medications that may be used 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 shape.

Nevertheless, the treatment for coital headaches for many people can be as 'easy' as adjusting your weight up or down to the normal weight for your size. Coital headaches can also be cured in some sufferers by an increased level of exercise, although this may stimulate exertion headaches in some cases.

The good news is though that most headaches related to sex are not serious in nature. In deed, different studies actually suggest that orgasm can relieve headaches and migraine in some cases. This implies that for some adults, refusing sex may actually be the reason that delays headache treatment.

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