How can acupuncture help migraine patients?

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How can acupuncture help migraine patients?

Acupuncture can help migraine patients

This is one of the top questions I get in my practice…”just how does acupuncture really work to help with a migraine?”

At Starting Point, we specialize in the treatment of chronic migraines and research is emerging every year, exploring this very question.

As migraine sufferers know, migraines can be unpredictable and debilitating. Most migraine sufferers report 2-8 migraine episodes a month.

How can you get anything done with suffering the majority of the month?!

There is hope!

Let’s dive in to see what one of the studies show

Most research around migraines and acupuncture involves exploring how the neural mechanisms of acupuncture work. It has already been shown that acupuncture needles can help to release endorphins and opioids in the brain to help reduce pain, increase blood flow, and reduce inflammation.

Read our previous post on acupuncture and how we can help migraines, here.

One study looked at how the acupuncture points affected the brain by measuring responses with a PET scan. Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan is a functional imaging that can provide a means to study how certain stimuli affect the brain. This study looked at specific acupoints, that are traditionally used to treat migraines, and recorded if they stimulated certain aspects in the brain.

Check out this research

In this study participants who had diagnosed migraine without aura, were grouped into three groups: acupuncture group, control group that received stimulation on non-acupoints “ie. Random spots”, and a group that did not receive any stimulation. The results showed per the analysis on the PET scan, that the group receiving acupuncture had more “cerebral patterns of metabolism” meaning more activity and analgesic effect was occurring compared to the control group. They concluded that acupoints did have specific functions to help decrease pain in migraine patients.

This is further evidence that acupuncture is a safe, effective, and natural way to not only decrease pain of chronic migraine sufferers but can potentially work to prevent migraines as well. There is hope!