Headache & Migraine Clinic Birmingham

Overview

Headache & Migraine Clinic at House of Health

At House of Health, we understand that chronic headaches and migraines can severely affect your quality of life. These conditions are often complex, requiring more than just a quick consultation.

 

While cutting-edge treatments remain difficult to access through the NHS, our clinic offers immediate access to advanced therapies including:

  • Migraine Injections
  • Greater Occipital Nerve Blocks
  • CGRP Monoclonal Antibodies – breakthrough treatments with exceptional response rates

 

Led by Dr. Katy Kyprainou, our specialised service provides comprehensive consultations and personalised treatment plans for even the most persistent headache disorders. Don’t let chronic headaches control your life any longer! Experience our bespoke approach to migraine management with treatment plans tailored to your specific needs and symptoms.

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Your Headache & Migraine Consultation Experience

What to Expect During Your Visit

When you visit House of Health for headache or migraine treatment, you can expect a thorough, patient-centred approach designed to address your specific condition.

Your first appointment with Dr. Katy Kyprainou will include:

  • Comprehensive Assessment:

A detailed review of your headache history, symptoms, triggers, and previous treatments.

  • Neurological Examination:

To rule out underlying conditions and confirm diagnosis.

  • Personalised Discussion:

Time to ask questions and express concerns about your condition.

  • Treatment Planning:

Collaborative development of your customised treatment strategy.

  • Migraine Injections:

Quick, minimally invasive procedures performed in our comfortable clinical setting.

  • Greater Occipital Nerve Blocks:

Precisely administered by Dr. Kyprainou to target nerve pathways

  • CGRP Monoclonal Antibodies:

Administered according to the latest clinical protocols with careful monitoring

Your journey doesn’t end after initial treatment. We provide:

  • Scheduled follow-up appointments to monitor progress

  • Adjustments to your treatment plan as needed

  • Ongoing support for managing your condition
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Meet Your Doctor

Dr. Katy Kyprianou

At House of Health, we understand that chronic headaches and migraines can severely affect your quality of life.


These conditions are often complex, requiring more than just a quick consultation. At the moment, getting cutting edge treatments on the NHS are difficult. At House of Health we offer Migraine injections, greater occipital nerve injections and offer newer treatments such as CGRP monoclonal antibodies that have a fantastic response to migraine.


At House of Health, Dr Katy Kyprainou leads this service and offers advanced treatments and consultations for headache and migraine without delay.


Our services are tailored to diagnose and treat even the most stubborn headache and migraines, ensuring a treatment plan that works for

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Further Information

Types of Headaches & Migraines

This is the commonest type of migraine.

 

We regard ‘aura’ as a warning for migraine. This can be in the form of visual disturbance (flashing lights, blind spots or other). In migraine without aura, there is no warning sign for the migraine.

 

Symptoms

  • Usually one sided headache of throbbing nature classically. It exacerbates with movement e.g. walking, climbing the stairs.
  • It is moderate to severe intensity which means patients are mostly unable to carry on routine activities.
  • Nausea and/or vomiting are experienced
  • Light, sound, movement and /or smell sensitivity has been described.

 

Lifestyle changes:

This can involve sleep hygiene, dietary advice, exercise, hydration and supplementation.

Affects 1 in 3 individuals experiencing migraine.

Symptoms:

Aura as above.The auras typically occur prior to a headache. In some people the headache may not happen.

Auras develop from 5 minutes to 60 minutes. 

  • Auras are usually visual (blind spots, zig zag lines, coloured spots/lines etc) but can be speech and cognitive (e.g. disorientation, brain fog and confusion). 

  • Sensory aura can be tingling in parts of the body, numbness/alterned sensation, motor aura is muscle weakness and vestibular aura is usually vertigo/dizzy spells.

Symptoms

 

At least two of the following:

  • slurred of speech
  • dizzy spells
  • high pitched ringing in the ears
  • double vision
  • Unsteady walk
  • Temporary reduced awareness (syncope)
  • Pins and needles and /or numbness affecting both upper and/or lower limbs
  • Bilateral visual disturbance such as flashing lights

 

Causes:

These attacks can be triggered by certain environmental or other triggers.

Symptoms

 

Patients experience a temporary weakness on one side as part of the attack. 

The weakness may be in addition to other auras (visual, sensory, cognitive, vestibular)

These are often scary as may resemble a stroke. The weakness can last from one hour to a few days, but usually settles within 24 hours. A headache may follow, occur before it or not at all.

Experiencing headache for 15 days per month or more, with 8 of those having migraine symptoms, for 3 months or longer. 

 

Causes:

There are a number of medical conditions that can increase your tendency to have migraine. These include:

  • mental health difficulties

  • Fibromyalgia

  • Sleep apnoea

  • High blood pressure

  • Pain relief medication overuse: 2/3rds of individuals with chronic migraine experience medication overuse headache where the acute abortive regime e.g. triptans or over the counter medication are taken above the recommended days per month in which case they start to cause headache rather than treat it. 

  • Hormonal changes e.g. perimenopause

For this type patients experience a mix of vertigo, dizziness or balance difficulties alongside other migraine symptoms. 

 

Symptoms

 

Migraine is usually associated with a range of typical symptoms alongside headache including:

  • Nausea and /or vomiting 

  • Sound, movement and / or light sensitivity 

 

Additionally other symptoms involved are: 

  • Smell sensitivity 

  • Vertigo

  • light or head touch exposure causing discomfort (allodynia)

 

Some patients experience just the vertigo symptoms without the pain. Vestibular migraine to be diagnosed migraine headache should be present for certain of those attacks.

 

Diagnosis

According to the ICHD-3 the diagnosis of vestibular migraine requires:

  • at least five episodes

  • a history of current or past migraine attacks

  • vertigo/dizzy spells lasting between 5 minutes and 72 hours

  • Headache or other migraine symptoms in >=50% of those episodes

 

A significant portion of women state that bleeding is a trigger for their attacks.

 

Cause:

The drop in oestrogen levels before your bleeding starts is linked to this type of migraine. Women with heavy and painful bleeds have higher levels of prostaglandin, which plays a role in migraine development, so managing these levels may help.

 

Diagnosis:

An attack occurs from two days before and up to three days into menstruation, in at least two out of three consecutive cycles.

Attacks are predictable and regular as they take place in a time cycle of several weeks.  

 

Symptoms

  • Nausea and/or vomiting

  • From 1 hour to 10 days in a row

  • Each cluster is at least a week apart and usually occur at the same time of the day, week, or month

  • Feeling normal between clusters

 

Symptoms

  • abdominal pain that lasts from 2-72 hours

  • nausea and/or vomiting during attack

  • no headache involved

  • normal self between attacks

 

Its most common cause is stress.

 

Symptoms

  • Tight pressure band like sensation around the head

  • May involve the neck and shoulders

  • Duration of 30 minutes to days

  • It has the potential to become chronic in which case it can be debilitating 

 

Cluster headache is extremely painful. It’s rare; approximately 1 in 1000 people have it. It is more common in men than women and mainly affects individuals in their 30s and 40s (but can affect any age).

 

The main symptom is an excruciating headache on one-side of the head, often around the eye. It occurs in clusters.

 

Symptoms

 

Severe pain which comes on very quickly, with no warning and involves one side of the head but can change sides. It usually occurs around the eye. It causes agitation and restlessness. People often pace, rock back and forth and may hold their head in agony. 

 

one or more of the symptoms below may be experienced during the attack:

  • red or streaming eye

  • drooping or swelling of the eyelid

  • a smaller pupil than normal

  • sweaty red hot face

  • blocked or streaming nose

 

They last from 15 minutes to three hours. Patients may have up to 8 attacks a day.

 

Attacks tend to occur around the same time of day as well as month of the year and can be closely linked to alcohol intake leading to an attack within 60 minutes of the drink. 

 

Cluster headache tends to improve with advancing age, with patients experiencing less frequency and longer remission periods.  

Tends to start during the exercise or within 30 minutes of stopping. It is of sudden onset and can last between minutes to under a day. It is of pulsating character usually. It can affect one or both sides of the head. It can be associated with nausea, vomiting
 

  • Can be associated with nausea, vomiting, light or sound sensitivity 

  • Factors such as exercising in heat, high humidity, high altitude, poor nutrition, caffeine use and alcohol use may be triggers. 

 

Symptoms of cardiac cephalalgia

 

Patients with coronary artery disease, such as angina or heart attacks, may experience headache associated to exertion such as walking, and that resolve upon resting.

  • This headache is normally over the back of head/occiput. May be associated with chest/neck/arm discomfort, breathlessness, dizziness, nausea and sweating, similar to angina. Migraine symptoms such as aura, light and sound sensitivity do not occur with it.

  • Your GTN spray can help relieve the discomfort. 

Occurs during sleep and wakes one up like an ‘alarm clock’ hence the second name alarm clock headache.  Common in patients over the age of 60 and more common in females. 

 

Symptoms

Headache described as dull, throbbing, pulsating, stabbing or burning which wakes one up.  It can occur on both or one side of the head and can last from 15 minutes to 4 hours. It can occur 1-3 times per night. 

 

It may be associated with watery eyes, eyelid droop or a blocked nose. May also be associated with nausea, light and sound sensitivity. 

 

Diagnosis

The official diagnostic criteria for hypnic headache include:

  • Recurrent headache waking one up from sleep 

  • Experienced on > 10 nights per month for over 3 months lasting 15 minutes to 4 hours

Hemicrania continua describes a continuous on sided pain. 

 

Symptoms

 

  • Pain plus associated symptoms such as eye-watering and redness, streaming and or blocked nose and /or eye lid drooping. These are on same side as headache

  • Nausea, vomiting, light sound or smell sensitivity 

 

Diagnosis

 

Trialling Indometacin NSAID oral medicine helps diagnosing it as responders confirm diagnosis. Preventative options may be used as with other migraine disorders. 

Also known as acute mountain sickness. 

 

Symptoms

Bilateral headache at altitudes about 8500 feet and this escalates with climbing higher, bend over, cough or Valsalva or exertion. 

 

Causes

At high elevation there is usually less oxygen in the air and so the body has less oxygen available to nourish the organs requiring it. This can lead to hypoxia

 

How can you prevent high altitude headache?

Allowing the body to adjust to heights is vital. If planning to climb altitudes over 8500 feet do so slowly and no more than 1600 feet per day. Hydration, carbohydrate nourishment and breaks are key. Avoid smoking and alcohol.  

Pricing

Our Services & Pricing

Initial Consultation

40 Minutes

£250

Follow-Up Consultation

20 Minutes

£250

Migraine Injection Therapy

£650/session

Greater occipital nerve injections

£499

Book Your Appointment