Although orgasm is usually a pleasurable and positive experience for most people, it can be 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 classifying them too; for example by severity or by area.
Basically, primary headaches have a known or unknown reason, 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 named coital cephalalgia or sexual headaches, is a rare, but severe type of headache that starts in the base 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 some cases have been known to continue for days in extreme examples.
It is surprising to many to discover that men are three times more likely to experience coital headaches than women and the people most at risk are those between 20 and 25 and 30 and 44. Doctors do not really understands why this should be. Coital headaches afflict about one percent of the population, although this number could be much higher due to people being embarrassed to discuss it.
Moreover, coital headaches are benign, which means that they cause no long-term adverse consequences, so far as we know. It appears that people taking sexual stimulants, like Cialis, are roughly 10% more prone to a coital headache. In fact, besides the obvious, temporary pain, the worst effects of coital headaches are differing degrees of dizziness, confusion and stiffness of neck.
However, it is still worth while visiting a doctor though, especially in the beginning, just to exclude the more severe reasons for headaches, such as brain tumours and blood clots. However, the doctor can do rather little to help by way of treatment. He could suggest a complete abstention from any form of sexual activity for a period varying from days to weeks or he may recommend trying taking medication some time before sexual foreplay commences.
Some of the headache medications that may be used are indomethacin, imitrex, zomig and propranolol, although if the headaches persist, your doctor may 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.
However, the cure for coital headaches for many sufferers 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 relieve 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.
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