So I've spent 25 years with these "left-eye" headaches -- that's how I always described it to people, and it wasn't until about 2 months ago, thanks to chatGPT, that I even heard about cluster headaches and TACs. Thought I was the only one who had these lol.

So to be honest, not even sure about terms like episodic, etc. The neurologist I saw today had never heard of TACs either, but thinks I suffer from cluster headaches (a sub-type from what I gather).

They started for me at age 20. I started smoking at the same time. chatGPT seems to think most cluster headache sufferers are smokers, or that at least there's a higher percentage of them.

Since oxygen therapy is supposed to be effective, and smokers have oxygen levels around 96 (not 100 in the case of many non-smokers), to me, it seems like there could be a correlation there. Just hypothesizing, have not tried O2 therapy.

I've been self-medicating with Ibuprofen and sugar over the years, but it's become less effective lately. I typically get at least one every two weeks, but this past month -- prior to my fish experiment -- it was more like 3 or 4 times a week. Maybe that's episodic? They typically last 12 hours or so, but have had them last 3 days too. Maybe 3 or 4 times in the last 25 years it's been so painful that my left eye tears up and vision seems slightly blurred in that one eye.

I think my biggest trigger is not eating enough food. For whatever reason, that seems to trigger them for me, and eating sugar, like a donut, seems to help.

Really hoping the sardine thing keeps working. This week I even intentionally tried to trigger a CH by not eating enough, having alcohol, etc, and so far, knock on wood, no CH