Researchers tried the daily capsaicin experiment with cluster headache sufferers. Unlike the wimpy medical students who rated the nose burning as an eight or nine on the ten-point pain scale, those used to the violence of cluster headache attacks rated the pain caused by capsaicin at only a three or four. By day five, they too became desensitized to the pain of the capsaicin. What happened to their headaches? Those who rubbed capsaicin in the nostril on the side of the head where the headaches occurred cut the average number of attacks in half. In fact, half the patients were apparently
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