What are common side effects from medications used to treat headaches?

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What are common side effects from medications used to treat headaches?

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Timothy A. Collins, MD

Neurologist

Duke Pain and Palliative Care Clinic

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Over the years, I've seen side effects from every medication we use for headaches.

Verapamil seems to cause the least problems, as side effects from this medication tend to be mild when they occur, and go away quicly when you stop it. Most common side effect is Constipation (probably 5% of my patients) and may 1 in 200-300 patients has puffy ankles from this. I've only had 1 in every 500-1000 patients (rough guess) get light headache or fatigued on Verapamil.

Propranolol causes fatigue/light headedness in probably 5-10% of patients that I've tried it on, and in some people can increase the chance of depression.

On average, Topamax causes tingling in the hands in 50% of patients, weight loss in 20% (not usually a bad thing) and trouble thinking in about 2%. (this is at the doses used for headache prevention)

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