Headache during sex, or orgasmic cephalalgia, was of little interest to the medical community for a long time. Its modern description belongs to the American scientist, neurologist Harold Wolf, when scientific interest in such cephalalgias increased in the 1970s of the last century.

“A rare type of headache, in the general population it occurs in 1 percent of cases,” says Natalia Minaeva, neurologist, cephalologist, algologist at the Medsi Clinical and Diagnostic Center. “This is an acute headache that occurs before or during orgasm and is relieved by the cessation of sexual activity.”

It usually begins as a dull, bilateral pain that increases with sexual arousal and peaks during orgasm. The average duration of the intense pain phase is 30 minutes, but then it can moderately last several hours.

It is now known that mainly young men (20-40 years old and sometimes adolescents) suffer from such cephalalgia – three to four times more often than women.

As a rule, an orgasmic headache occurs during sex with a partner, regardless of the patient’s sexual preferences. In a third of patients, cephalgia occurs during masturbation, as well as nocturnal erections.

In 58 percent of patients, a headache occurs with every contact, in 30 percent attacks develop unpredictably.

Orgasmic pain is characterized by alternating phases of exacerbations lasting several weeks or months and remissions.

“Headache during sex is divided into preorgasmic and orgasmic,” continues the doctor. “Preorgasmic headache is a dull pain in the head or neck, combined with a feeling of tension in the neck and / or masticatory muscles and meeting the criterion. Pain occurs during sexual activity and increases along with sexual arousal.”

Orgasmic headache – sudden, intense, explosive – occurs during orgasm.

If the headache continues after intercourse, then it is either an ongoing orgasmic headache or another type of headache that is characteristic of the patient, such as a tension headache.

Orgasmic cephalgia is primary and secondary. The pathogenesis of primary orgasmic pain is not exactly known. There are versions of increased intracranial pressure, muscle spasm and transient spasm of intracerebral vessels.

Less common is a secondary orgasmic headache associated with a certain pathology of the brain. In this case, the range of diagnoses is quite wide: intracerebral hemorrhage, cerebral aneurysm, dissection of the brachiocephalic arteries, taking certain medications, etc.

If such a headache occurs for the first time, additional examination is always required: consultation with a neurologist, CT or MRI of the brain, MR angiography, since in some cases such symptoms may be associated with a serious pathology of the brain or cerebral vessels.

From non-drug methods of treatment, the cessation of sexual intercourse is recommended. For prolonged or frequent orgasmic headaches, certain drugs should be taken before intercourse, since simple analgesics are ineffective in 90 percent of cases during an orgasmic headache attack.

The prognosis for such pain is favorable. In most patients, the headache stops when sexual activity is interrupted. Another 51 percent of patients note a significant reduction in cephalalgia with a more passive role during sex.

According to clinical observation of such patients, 82 percent of patients eventually have a stable remission, 16 percent have one or fewer attacks in two months. Only in two percent of patients the disease becomes chronic. The duration of such cephalalgia is on average from one month to one year – two years.