PHOTIC HEADSHAKING, how can i help my horse

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maisiemoo

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My horse has just today been diagnosed with photic headshaking syndrome, [ in the most dramatic fashion if you read my earlier post ] Vet was'nt really sure what to do about it and is going to research it, Agreed it would be a good idea to post on here ,cos other peoples experiences are better than companies claiming there products work . i would be sucked into any advert and end up spending a fortune, please help if you can, :confused:
 
Just a recommendation as it worked for me:

you could try Periactin - an over the counter, non prescription, antihistamine which helps my photic headshaker who also had diagnosed pollen allergies. My vet says it reduces the amount of light taken into the eye (or similar technical explanation!).

It is relatively cheap (I pay £1.37 for a packet of 30), and for my 13.2hh pony we started on one packet in each feed twice a day and then reduced it from there. The recommended dosage is 0.3mg per kg of horse weight. It had an amazing effect on about day 4 and now he is on 15 tabs twice a day as this season has just started but will probably go down to about 10 tabs once a day.

I think the drug in it is called cyproheptadine. I only found out about after researching the net for about a year of so and stumbled across a research paper from a vet journal in Canada and asked my vet to look into it, which he did, and was happy to firstly prescribe it. After this I found I can get it on the net without a prescription for less money.

It may not work for you, but its not a huge outlay to have a go with it and you should see any results within a couple of weeks. It can also be combined with Carbamazapine if needed but we didn't get that far.

Here is a link to the research paper I found and showed to my vet:
http://ukpmc.ac.uk/articlerender.cgi?artid=380698

Hope it helps you, best of luck x
 
Sorry to hear of the diagnosis - hope you find a solution

Have no personal experience but have heard of yards in Oz using what looks like a fly fringe but the fringes are madee of wide strips of leather (at least an inch wide) so they give a heavy curtain over the face to minimise the amount of light let in
 
My horse is a photic and insect driven headshaker. he is on NAF shakerelief, and on still days like today, hacks out in an equilibrium face mask and nose net. These are designed for riding.
For safety sake, I always hack him in a running martingale incase he does start tossing his head.
 
i was also going to say a full face mask/fly mask as I know a couple of horses these have helped greatly with!

also, you should know that it is a neurological disease, and it does progress (speed is totally dependent on the horse!) but it can mean the horse becomes totally unridable!

Sorry for the diagnosis, but i hope you find something that works for your horse!
 
Lucy_Nottingham said:
i was also going to say a full face mask/fly mask as I know a couple of horses these have helped greatly with!

also, you should know that it is a neurological disease, and it does progress (speed is totally dependent on the horse!) but it can mean the horse becomes totally unridable!

Sorry for the diagnosis, but i hope you find something that works for your horse!
Click to expand...

Can it be triggered? Like by long periods of being kept inside with little or no access to direct sunlight?
 
It is a relatively new area of research but the current theory si that it is to do with a problem at the base of the trigeminal nerve (the 5th cranial nerve that inervates the face, parts of the eyes and nostrils)
It causes a sensation where it is a consistent unpleasent sensation on the face/head (hence resulting in head shaking as the horse attempts to remove this sensation) and it is then worsened by "triggers" such as on a dry hot day in a sand school with a breeze....... dust etc hits the horses face and goes up the nostrils, on top of the already existing unpleasent sensation causes more exaggerated head shaking to try to get away from this sensation.

hence fly masks etc help as they sort of act like a windbreaker and sieve prior to it all hitting the horses face.

Photosensitive head shakers are more like (as a human equivalent) getting like a migrane from the bright light..... (although some are so sensitive its almost any sunlight!) and again it causes unpleasent sensation either on the face or mentally (i.e. migrane) and so again causes headshaking.

But as I say it can progress to the point where the horse just cannot do anything without headshaking as everything just triggers it!
Often mild headshakers are not as bad if they have a challenging job to do (e.g. a lot of showjumpers have mild headshaking but when they are focussed on a jump, they don't do it..)

I don't think that kept in the dark for ages then introduced to bright light would a "true" head shaker, but it may produce headshaking as (as i said above) it can induce sort of migranes ........ or unpleasent feelings/sensation to the horse due to such an extreme alteration to its "norm"

Hope this helps some? sorry as I say its a new area of interest and I only know the stuff above because the vet I was just working with went to a Derick Knottenbelt seminar on it! :) so I grilled her on the information for it incase it comes up in my exams in 2 weeks! :D
 
O also sorry thats why the full face masks help with photosensitive horses as it dims the light and sort of breaks up the beams (obv that isnt physically correct but you get what i mean right??) so it minimises the trigger and so in theory minimises the head shaking.

But just be aware if it is too tight or touches the face too much it may make the head shaking worse by putting "pressure" on the face
 
it may very well be, so maybe introducing him to more turn out (gradually) is a good idea to see if it either a) makes it better or b) makes it worse....

Maybe turning out with a full face mask on or something similar might help as well but i dont know.....

sorry trying to help, not sure i am tho! (not sure how to put the red faced smiley up but thats what i was trying to do)
 
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