Headache pills 'are poisoning patients'

A doctor today called for an end to the “misinformation and myth” surrounding headaches as he warned some patients were making their problems worse by taking too much medication.

Consultant neurologist Russell Lane said the public had to stop “poisoning themselves with painkillers”.

He said GPs lacked understanding of what caused headaches and would often prescribe increasingly strong painkillers if patients returned.

“They’re given inappropriate advice and treatment, and often harmful treatment,” Mr Lane said. “By the time these individuals get to our clinics, they have a headache most of the time and they’re taking copious amounts of medication, which makes it worse.” He warned that repeated use of codeine-based drugs, such as Co-codamol or Panadol, was likely to result in a “medication-overuse headache” — a headache all day, every day.

Mr Lane said: “It’s an electrical disturbance which is inherent in a normal human brain. We have got to stop GPs and the public poisoning themselves with painkillers.”

He said stress, tea, coffee, alcohol and a lack of sleep were all “provocations or triggers”. He said: “It’s not a disease. You can’t cut it out. There is a huge amount of misinformation and myth out there.”

It can take an average of 10 years for patients to be referred to specialist headache clinics. The wait to see a consultant at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen Square can be as long as 16 years — and headaches are estimated to cost the UK economy £2 billion a year.