I agree, the idea that migraines can be even touched by just Tylenol is pretty ridiculous.

I developed cluster type headaches last year, and let me tell you, two Percoset BARELY touched them. I was having headaches that last over a week. It was torture.

I'm extremely thankful that it took neurology only one try to find a medication that works very well (for me) in preventing these headaches. When I get them now, they are much milder and of shorter duration.

that is really an insult and completely misinformed. i've ended up in the ER more than once getting shots of morphine when imitrex wasn't even working. i had to wear a hat and dark glasses and be driven there and helped to even walk. my SO and i were on the road before i could get to my MD and we stopped at every exit with a drug store, Excedrine Migraine, Head On, ice packs to make it home. my doctor sent me straight to the ER.
shameful to put that out there.

I had migraine for awhile during menopause. I ended up in ER getting IV meds. I tried all the home remedies I could before I went to the hospital.

I can't believe that an intelligent person could judge others this way.
THese are usually the type who are first in line for meds when they have the slightest problem that is difficult to diagnose and treat.

Reminds me of an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. The doctor was a hologram. He claimed that he understood how it felt to be sick.
When no one believed him, he gave himself a flu that would last 7 days. He was cherry and happy with all the symptoms.......
UNTIL day 8 and still sick. FInally on day 9 the chief engineer tells him that she reprogrammed the flu to last "a little longer" just so he could feel what it's really like to be human and not know when it will end.
Boy, did the doc change his tune after that. Wonldn't life be better if we could all "infect" all doctors with indeterminate issues so they understand what it is like on our side of the table?
I think we would have more people admitting that they don't know everything about everything.

I have a cousin who exhaderates everything. She has "migraines". I bet she was in the study.
Honestly, she uses any excuse to spend the day in bed reading.
Oh, yeah, when I had a migraine, I stayed in bed, curtains drawn, sound off, no reading, no nothing, no movement. Just prayed that I could keep down water so no hospital.

Hang in there

Maybe it was because she said acute migraine but a chronic suffer then I dont think Tylenol would work for many reasons. The only thing I can think of is she means people who suffer with one less then once a month that this would be beneficial

You can post to those just like you post here.

I don't think the ones who got relief had actual migraine headache. It simply does not respond to ordinary pain relief (even narcotics don't do as much for migraine as they do for other pain).

Hi Enigma, you are so right! I have been going thru this for over 30 yrs. First it began as the classical migraine, one sided then i had a severe head injury in a car accident. Then the nightmare really began. I have hesitated many times in answering posts to the new sufferers, not wanting to upset them. These headaches totally destroyed my life, but if i had any support from the many doctors i have seen over the course of these many years maybe the outcome would have been different. Support is vital. All i got was a wall of indeference, and blaming me, or treating me like a drug addict. It makes me so sad to read in the posts to this day that nothing much has changed. I have tried to not discourage others just beginning this journey. These headaches are impossible to treat effectively and the medications are pretty much inadequate. I have hoped that i could help just a little and be there for some who need it. I also have been suicidal and as with most things i have tried i was a failure at this too. So far the only thing i can do now is to take my pain meds regularly and also a anti-depressant which is the only way i can sort of have a life. I start right away as soon as i wake up and do not let it even get a chance to start. I have them daily and most doctors do not believe me when i try and tell them how bad they are. This is what works for me now and until something new comes out i will not change. Oh, i forgot to include Excedrin which i use daily also. It is a god send. Tylenol is a joke.Only an idiot would even suggest such a thing. We all need each other for support and any information we might have. Sorry this is so long but i just needed to say it. I hope that this might help just a little. God help and protect all of you.

The real conclusion of the trial may be even more depressing...that is to say that tylenol works as well as anything (which is to say not at all).

Preventitive medications (beta blockers), abortive vasoactive medicines (imitrex), and anti inflammatories have shown limited promise in a well selected group of Migraine sufferers, but there are a certain percentage of resistant cases where nothing is effective and what remains is to suffer through, or sedation and suffering (less as the person is in a quasi, or semi anesthetized state of mind) through.

MIGRAINES ARE HELL.............

Tylenol is a joke!!!!!!!

I have to say I take a lot of medicine for my migraines. I am highly medicated. What really works is my BOTOX injections every 3 months.

I stopped working last September, and my migraines decreased from 20 a month to 5 a month. However, I will be returning to work this September to see if I can handle it. Wish me luck!

My beautiful daughter has 24 hour a day headaches...most of the time, they are low grade and just "sit" there in her head.

Sometimes they flare up into a migraine and require narcotic pain medication to allow her to be able to get up out of bed and do simple tasks like eat, potty and take a bath.

Once in a while---she has the most horrific headaches, they have her on the floor screaming and crying in agony. We done know why she has them and we have undergone every test recommended to decipher them. When they are this bad--it is a trip to the ER and a shot of a heavy narcotic to put her to sleep.

She has been diagnosed 3 times with Bells Palsy because the headaches actually cause her face to lax on the left side...the next morning, when the headache is lessened--her face works.

There is no one in the world that can tell me that Migraines are a Tylenol only issue and don't cause any real impact on a person's life.

HUGS to you all

Hey Enigma
I post article results that are surprising...thats the point. I too am a migraine sufferer and was surprised to hear that tylenol works for so many people..it may be that, like one of the DS users says here, nothing works great. In any case, the fact that tylenol works for some peoples migraine pain does not trivialize migraines.
Dr O.

What crap! Acute is the point of no return already for me. I have to catch it at the first sign or it's full blown kill me now.

Using Acute and Chronic in this case makes no sense if one is referring to 1st couple of migraines vs the years later and still getting them. One learns that the headache is something more than just a head ache when tylenol, aspirin, advil, motrin, etc doesn't work. No one would go to the doctor to investigate headaches that go away with tylenol.

Yes there are things that can cut a migraine at the knees if caught in that narrow window of time. For each person it maybe a different med or combination of meds but timing is everything. Many people are still looking for that combination for them. By the time one is heading to the hospital, please kill me now feels very real as an option. I have noticed that ERs do take migraines seriously and it does get you in to a doctor fast so they can start the iv.

I did find a little book, Migraines for Dummies, at the drugstore once and I found it helpful to show to those who have never experienced a migraine what is actually going on in my head. It's a short read so I haven't had any trouble getting those who care to read it. They do not refer to what I am feeling as just a headache anymore and they do not hand me tylenol thinking it's going to help.

I'm really shocked any doc would say that. I used to have severe migraines daily till I figured out the triggers. One was codeine. About 3 months ago my neck was killing me and I took one of my ones (not expired) and imitrex did nothing. I get projectile vomiting around 40-50 times and finally went to the ER.

They took it very seriously and gave me 5 drugs, which I was too groggy to remember, except Haladol, which is an antipsychotic, to relax the brain. All by IV, of course.

Maybe this good doc has had a few mild headaches and taken Tylenol and it worked. I had one in hospital after surgery after they forced Percocet down my throat on a 24 hour empty stomach. I puked green vomit all over their nice white uniforms and shoes and then they believed me. Oh yes, and the walls, too. I said I would rather do without the pain of a migraine and suffer the pain of the surgery. They then gave me tramadol, which worked well for the surgical pain and did not trigger a migraine.

Sorry, this just brings back a lot of bad memories of stupid docs.

I had migraines from the age of 11 (just before my periods started and continued until I was in my early 20's. I would have to leave school, and (believe it or not) I LOVED school, be taken to the doctor's office and given IV meds. I kept a blindfold and "barf bag" with me at all times because I would start seeing flashing lights and within 10 minutes the nausea would hit and then the pain. There weren't really any preventative drugs back then, but they would tell you things like "avoid caffeine", which I did.

However, one day at school I started having the light show, and in a desperate attempt to not leave school I took a Vicodin that had been given to me after a previous migraine and I put it in my locker. However, my best friend went to get me something to take it with and brought me back a Coke. Even though I was supposed to avoid caffeine, I drank it anyway. Surprisingly, my headache never really materialized. I played around with various things after this, but eventually found that, for me at least, caffeine ingested at the first sign of migraine would often stop the migraine. The only way this continued to work was if I avoided caffeine at all other times, but it really did work. My doctors thought I was crazy, but sure enough a few years later they had migraine medicine that contained caffeine.

Basically what I am saying is that different people respond to different things. Migraines are definitely not "just headaches" and anyone who has ever had one can tell you that. In migraines, the blood vessels constrict and limit the flow of blood to portions of the brain, thus the pulsating or stabbing pain it produces. My prodromal phase (before pain starts), I discovered would happen sometimes up to two days before a migraine (and about 6 days before my period). During that phase, I was obnoxiously, unusually happy. I know that sounds strange but that was how I knew a migraine was on the way. Don't get me wrong, if I won the lottery and was ecstatically happy, it didn't mean I was going to get a migraine. This was just something I noticed in the around 13 year period in which I had migraines. Now, occasionally, I would have one that did not coincide with my period and, if I did not catch it before the pain started, the only thing that would stop it was IV narcotics, antiemetics, and another drug that I can't really remember but I think it was a vasodilator. Then I just had to go home, lie in my dark bedroom with a blindfold and earplugs and sleep it off.

Apparently, hormones play a big role in migraines and I just hope I don't start them again when I go through menopause.

I always wonder about these kind of compilation analysis reports. Besides being ineffective by most accounts, the survey cites a dose of 1000mg reporting pain relief at two hour mark. With 4000 mg/ day the max dose due to concerns of liver damage, it seems this scenario is prone to overdose. Later in the results it talks of pairing it with reglan, now know to be a risk for serious side effects. I also saw a different article citing the Am. Academy of Neurologist's practice guidelines stating that Tylenol alone is insufficient to produce results. I think most migraine meds with Tylenol have an additional component or two in them. I take Fioricet bc the statins are contraindicated for me. If I take it early enough ot has impact but can't stop a full blown migraine (like the ones that start while sleeping!!!) I just don't have too many options. But I do have to wonder how many people bandy around the term migraine for just about any headache. I've known people who say they have a migraine but can stay in a noisy dance hall or do taekwan do. Me, I walk around with sunglasses, even indoors, can hardly move, and can react to the slightest noise.. So maybe this research is skewed by subjective reporting? Idk. All I know is this kind of junk science ends up as fodder for the insurance companies to force patients to fail-first and so it is upsetting. I wish you well.

Thank you for responding, Dr Orrange.

As a doctor, you are a source of power and the 'final word' for sufferers and layman, so when you make a statement, then it is beleived. Your words hold so much seriousness and power that unless you tell us that you can't beleive what you have read also, we think you beleive it also.

Migraine sufferers have been minimalized in the eyes of medicine since the beginning of time and still we struggle to get proper healthcare. Everyday people can't beleive how bad it is and think we are faking so to read an article like this will just confirm that we are just a bunch of whiners that just need a tylenol.


That is why I am so upset. Words have power and this trial I don't think could have been fair. The clinical trial doesn't state what group of migrainers they have used and I seriously doubt they had a specific or consistant single catagory of migrainers. It was likely a hodgepodge of different types and degrees.

Of course every single one of us migrainers have tried tylenol like products. If it worked, there would be no issue.

If you meant to say that you thought it was absurd also, then it didn't come across.

I apologize if I've been hard on you. I'm certain you are a kind well meaning person. It's these kinds of words that have hit me so often in my life that upset me so.