Coital Headaches
Although orgasm is usually a pleasurable and positive experience 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.
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 categories: primary or idiopathic, and symptomatic, although there are other ways of grouping them too; for instance by severity or by area.
Basically, primary headaches have a known or unknown cause, whereas symptomatic headaches are often caused by a previous 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 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 be 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 the worst 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 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 have no long-term ill effects, as far as doctors know. It appears that people taking sexual stimulants, like Cialis, are roughly 10% more at risk to a coital headache. In deed, apart from 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 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 form of sexual activity for a period ranging from days to weeks or he may recommend trying taking medication some time before sexual foreplay begins.
A few of the headache medications that can be taken are indomethacin, imitrex, zomig and propranolol, although if the headaches persist, your doctor could prescribe some other preventive medications to be taken|used| on a daily basis. Sufferers of frequent coital headaches may also experience 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 beneficial. 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 people can be as simple 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 could bring on exertion headaches in some cases.
The good news is though that most headaches related to sex are not serious in nature. In fact, 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.