migraine medication and soaring

All,

I'm an aerospace medicine physician who works full time with FAA medical
certification issues, for professional pilots (as well as flying gliders for
fun).

There was an excellent summary of treatment options earlier in this thread,
so I won't re-hash that.

Here's the FAA rules on this, were you applying for a medical. (Obviously we
don't need medicals in the US, but these are still good common sense
guidelines).

Prophylactic (preventive) meds, like betablockers (Inderal, tenormin), or
calcium channel blockers, or ACE inhibitors: Ok with the FAA if they work
for you, and you have no side effects which would prevent safe performance
of aircrew duties.

Abortants (like the triptans, including imitrex, maxalt, etc): No fly within
24 hours after last dose.

These rules apply to pain-only migraines which occur twice a month or less
freuently. If you get neurological symptoms, and particularly if you have
visual symptoms, the FAA usually requires a 6 month headache free interval
before clearing a pilot who requires a medical.

An earlier poster was correct, the VFS web site at www.aviationmedicine.com
is an excellent resource for these types of questions.

Hope this helps,
Bullwinkle

On 5/9/05 4:48 AM, in article opsqh8bly1x5vgts@zoete_b, "Barbara de Zoete"
wrote:

On Sat, 07 May 2005 22:21:58 GMT, Malcolm Austin
wrote:

Barbara,
RAS = rec.aviation.soaring (i.e. this newsgroup)

:-)


Should / could have thought of that... :-)
Thanks