By Karen Rowan
MyHealthNewsDaily

Every time a young man watched pornography over two years, he experienced a headache so severe he had to stop watching, according to a report of his case.

The headache would develop gradually, beginning within the first five minutes of the video, and would reach its most severe point within eight to 10 minutes, according to the neurologists who treated the man, a 24-year-old bachelor in India.

There are two types of "primary headache associated with sexual activity," as the condition is properly called, and it sounds as if this man had the less common type, which progresses slowly along with heightening sexual arousal, Dr. Amy Gelfand, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, said after hearing about the case.

"The more common type is a sudden and severe headache that occurs at orgasm," Gelfand said. The seeming commonness of that headache may simply be due to the fact that people are more likely to bring them to medical attention, frightened by their timing, she added.

Regardless of the type, primary sex headaches are a mystery, Gelfand said  — no one really knows what causes them. Some have speculated that muscle contractions in the neck and jaw during sex may somehow trigger the headaches, while others have suggested they occur because blood vessels in the head are abnormally reactive to sexual activity.

The researchers who treated the man in India suggested his case was caused by changes in the pain-sensing nerves in the face and jaw, along with increased pain sensitivity due to "a heightened emotional state associated with viewing pornography."

Primary sex headaches strike 1 percent of the population at some point in life, and are more common in men, Gelfand said. About half of people who have them also have migraines, but it's not known whether having migraines raises the likelihood of having sex headaches, or vice versa  – or whether other untold factors are behind both.

The patient in India — an otherwise healthy man who worked as a software professional — had no history of migraines or tension headaches in general, and he reported no previous headaches linked with sexual activity, including masturbation. He'd had no head injuries or meningitis infections, the researchers said.

Previous studies have not suggested any link between the headaches and specific sexual behaviors, the researchers said.

Story: Allergic to orgasm? Man's sad story has happy ending

The results of the man's physical and neurological exams were reportedly normal. Gelfand said that is often with the case in people with primary sex headaches. (In fact, if an exam revealed a physical cause of the headaches, then by definition, the person would be instead diagnosed with a "secondary sex headache," she said.)

The man was advised to take a combination of ibuprofen and acetaminophen half an hour before watching porn, and he reported the drugs significantly relieved his pain.

In most people, the headaches occur over a period of a few months, rather than years, Gelfand said. Patients are often treated with a drug called indomethacin, which is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug available by prescription in the U.S., and is also used to treat other types of headaches.

The case report was published online June 14 in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. 

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Researchers have finally figured out why Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) had all those headaches. And, yes, the lightning bolt plays a role.

Patients often see multiple doctors before they get their headaches diagnosed – and Harry Potter, it turns out, is no exception.

Back in 2007 a leading headache specialist, after poring through Harry’s headache history, concluded that the boy’s intermittent stabbing head pain must be due to migraines. The specialist, Dr. Fred Sheftell, along with some colleagues described the diagnosis in a paper published in the journal Headache.

But the diagnosis didn’t completely fit Harry’s symptoms and over the years several other specialists have chimed in with their own expert opinions.

Now, with clues that came from the final chapter of Harry’s biography by J.K. Rowling, experts think they finally have the correct diagnosis - nummular headache. And they’ve described their reasoning in the most recent edition of Headache.

Many neurologists have never heard of nummular headaches, says the lead author, Dr. Matthew Robbins, an assistant professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the director of inpatient services at the Montefiore Headache Center.

And that’s partly because these kinds of headaches have only recently been identified and codified, he explained.

The telling symptom pointing to nummular headaches, Robbins says, is that every time Harry suffers from head pain it’s in a small spot in exactly the same place.

Another line of evidence: nummular headaches can be sparked by a head injury, like the one that led to Harry’s lightning bolt scar.

Robbins and his colleagues studied nummular headaches in dozens of real patients.  A telling sign is the lesions that “have been described to occur in scalp regions of [nummular headache] patients, although admittedly, none of these cutaneous lesions manifested in the shape of a lightning bolt,” the researchers explained in their article.

You may be wondering why experts spend their time diagnosing fictional characters.  It’s a good way to educate the public about a condition that can occur in children and often goes unrecognized, Robbins says.

“If you can get the word out to people who are suffering, it’s a positive thing,” Robbins says, adding, “and we had some fun along the way.”

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