What Are Coital Headaches?
Although orgasm is usually a pleasurable and positive experience for most people, it can become painful for those 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 a number of different 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.
Basically, primary headaches have a known or unknown cause, whereas symptomatic headaches are usually the result of trauma. Primary headaches include amongst others: migraine, tension headaches, cluster headaches and coital headaches.
Coital headaches, also called coital cephalalgia or sexual headaches, is a rare, but severe 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 more severe. 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 cases.
Men are three times more prone to coital headaches than women and the age groups most at risk are those between 20 and 25 and 30 and 44. Nobody really understands why this should be. Coital headaches affect about one percent of the population, although this number could be a lot higher due to people being embarrassed to talk about it.
Moreover, coital headaches are benign, which means that they have no long-term adverse consequences, so far as doctors know. It appears that people taking sexual stimulants, like Cialis, are roughly 10% more prone to a coital headache. In deed, besides the obvious, temporary pain, the worst effects of coital headaches are varying degrees of dizziness, confusion and stiffness of neck.
However, it is still worth visiting a doctor though, especially in the early cases, just to rule out 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 cure. He may suggest a complete abstention from any kind of sexual activity for a period ranging from days to weeks or he may suggest trying taking medication some time before sexual foreplay begins.
Some of the headache medications that can be used are indomethacin, imitrex, zomig and propranolol, although if the headaches persist, your doctor may prescribe 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.
However, the cure for coital headaches for a lot of people can be as simple as bringing 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 could bring on exertion headaches in a few cases.
Now the good news is that most headaches related to sexual activities are not at all serious in nature. In fact, research actually states that orgasm can prevent headaches and even migraine in some instances. This implies that for some adults, refusing sex may actually be the cause of their headache in the first place.
If you have a problem with migraine or headaches, you really ought to definitely visit our website at Stopping Headaches. Don't reprint this exact article. Instead, reprint a free unique content version of this same article.
