insomnia med made my headaches & head pressure disappear.

[Guest guest]

Hmmm...I took one of my husband's sleeping pills the other night to avoid being up all night due to late caffeinne ingestion. Since I've been having some sporadic insomnia, I felt it would be better to be proactive, rather than suffer the next day from another night's lack of sleep. I looked at the bottle and didn't recognize the drug, but my husband said it really worked for him w/o side effects so I thought what the heck, might as well give it a shot. Wow, next morning I woke up without any of the head pressure/congestiony thing I've been having lately. Plus there was no sign of the smallish morning headache which more often than not progresses into a full blown migraine. That was 2 nights ago, and I haven't had a headache or head/sinus pressure since. This is the first time in months. Since that was such an unexpected result,

I looked the drug up and whaddya know...it's temazepam...a pretty potent benzodiazepine drug, (same class as Klonopin, which I was planning never to take). But I was really curious as to why the big switch in the sinus/headache stuff and saw that one of the side effects of benzodiazepines is potential respiratory depression (which seems like it would be contraindicated for sleep apnea patients, like my husband). But this got me thinking. Pehaps whatever represses the respiratory system also calms the inflammation? And perhaps that's why my head is suddenly feeling normal for the first time in several months? I took 30mg, as that's what the tablets were. But it turns out that's a pretty high dose and is more regularly prescribed at 7.5 or 15mg. Max is 20mg in Australia. Strange my

husband's doc started him at 30mg. Since this drug is highly addictive, I don't plan on using it often (once I get my own prescription) but I will definitely try it again the next time I have a migraine or start with the head pressure/stuffing up and see if it has the same effect. At least for the last few days, it seems to have completely aborted the headache cycle I've been in. What a relief. I've read a few reports from people saying that Klonopin does the same thing for them. This is completely surprising to me, as all of the various opiates I've tried up til now have never been able to touch my headaches. penny