What Are Coital Headaches?

Although orgasm is usually a pleasurable and happy activity for most people, it can become painful for those who find that it starts coital headaches. For these people, sexual activity can actually cause these coital headache attacks.

Medically speaking, a headache, or cephalalgia, is a symptom of various conditions of the head and sometimes the neck too. They can be classified into two main groups: primary or idiopathic, and symptomatic, although there are other ways of classifying them as well; for example by severity or by area.

Put simply, primary headaches have a known or unknown cause, whereas symptomatic headaches are often caused by injury. Primary headaches include: migraine, tension headaches, cluster headaches and coital headaches, amongst others.

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 become even more severe. 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 knows why this should be. Coital headaches affect about one percent of the population, although this number could be a lot higher due to people being embarrassed to talk about it.

Coital headaches are benign, meaning that they cause no long-term ill effects, as far as we know. It seems that people taking sexual stimulants, like Viagara, are about 10% more at risk to a bout of coital headache. In fact, besides 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 beginning, just to rule out the more serious 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 kind of sexual practice for a period ranging from days to weeks or he may recommend trying taking medication some time before sexual foreplay begins.

Some of the headache medications that can be used are indomethacin, imitrex, zomig and propranolol, although if the headaches continue, your doctor may suggest daily preventive medication. People suffering from frequent coital headaches may experience a positive response to migraine preventive medications, such as beta blockers or verapamil. Non-steroidal anti inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) such as ibuprofen may similarly be helpful. Coital headaches and migraines are also more likely to occur if a person is in poor physical shape.

Nevertheless, the cure for coital headaches for many sufferers can be as ‘easy’ 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 may bring on exertion headaches in some people.

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 means that for some adults, refusing sex may actually be the reason that delays headache treatment.

If you suffer from migraine or headaches, you should definitely go to our website on Stopping Headaches.