Migraines are one of the most disabling chronic pain conditions known to mankind, often accompanying other symptoms that can be distressing or disconcerting.
Painkillers provide temporary relief, but don’t address the source of migraine pain. That is why holistic approaches to migraine treatment should be carefully considered – these holistic remedies may prove more successful and safer than their pharmaceutical alternatives.
Chiropractic Care
Migraines can be debilitating headaches that cause severe, throbbing or pulsing pain on one side of the head and may include light and sound sensitivity as well as nausea and vomiting.
Chiropractors specialize in treating musculoskeletal conditions that contribute to migraines, including spinal misalignments. By manipulating the spine, chiropractors aim to enhance nervous system functionality – an action which could relieve migraine symptoms.
Other holistic treatment approaches may include acupuncture, which involves inserting needles into specific points on the body to relieve pain and alleviate stress, massage therapy or both as ways of soothing migraine pain.
As migraines can have different impacts on each individual, it’s essential that patients and providers work together to develop an integrative treatment approach tailored to your own unique circumstances. Hascalovici suggests using an acronym called CARE: this stands for reviewing all available research on each option as they evaluate it.
Diet
Diet is one of the best ways to prevent migraines. To reduce migraine attacks, it is important to avoid artificial sweeteners like MSG, as well as foods known to trigger migraines like aged cheese, chocolate, caffeine and alcohol. Also important is eating regularly rather than skipping meals – missing meals could increase your migraine frequency significantly.
Food journals can help in identifying possible dietary triggers of migraine. When working with a headache specialist, an elimination diet (removing one food at a time for two weeks to see if your migraines decrease or disappear) may be helpful in combatting migraines. Avoiding extreme heat, dehydration and stress may also provide some relief; alternative therapies such as yoga and acupuncture have also proven successful as preventative measures against migraine. However, these holistic remedies should never replace medications as their effectiveness has yet to be proven as primary treatments against migraine.
Stress Management
Stressful situations can trigger migraines by altering hormone levels, leading to pain-inducing hormone changes that manifest themselves through migraine attacks. Therefore, managing both physical and emotional stress levels for those suffering from persistent headaches is vitally important.
Discover ways to unwind through breathing exercises, meditation and yoga – activities which combine mind and body movement – such as Calm or Headspace apps that enable easy meditating anywhere at any time.
Determine what’s causing you stress and take steps to alleviate it. For instance, if your daily highway commute is becoming stressful, perhaps taking public transportation or working from home some days could help.
Connecting with others who suffer from migraines is also key, as it can help relieve some of the loneliness and frustration caused by migraines. Join an online or in-person migraine support group and converse, vent, swap tips with those who understand and thereby significantly reducing stress levels. You may even discover an excellent therapist or coach that can teach stress management techniques.
Meditation
Meditation can provide great relief from migraines for many people. There are various types of meditation, but mindfulness meditation is probably the most widely practiced. This technique involves focusing on your breath while noting any thoughts that come into your head, and finding a quiet spot without distractions during practice time.
Research shows that meditation helps reduce migraine pain and negative mood, yet not all forms are equally effective in terms of pain tolerance and migraine coping; spiritual meditation has proven more successful at increasing these factors than non-spiritual forms, leading to decreased analgesic medication usage and decreasing headache-inducing stress levels.
Researchers conducted an experiment utilizing spiritual meditation as a non-pharmacological treatment for migraine, randomly assigning 92 meditation naive participants into one of four groups for 30 days and having them practice their assigned technique for 20 minutes each day while filling out daily migraine diaries. Their results revealed that all four techniques significantly reduced migraine frequency, intensity and negative mood; with spiritual meditation practitioners experiencing the greatest reductions in analgesic medication usage than other groups.
