Two Secrets to Migraine Prevention

Are you one of those people who feel plagued by chronic and relentless migraines? Do they interfere with your day-to-day activities and affect your ability to work? Are you frustrated that your doctor keeps recommending prescription drugs that don’t work and lead to more side effects than actually helping curb the migraines? You are NOT alone! We hear those stories every day when people come to our office for the first time. Are there any secrets to migraine prevention?

What are complex migraines?

It is estimated that over 1.25 billion people suffer from migraines. By definition, migraines are classified as an episodic disorder of recurrent attacks which may produce pain on one side or both sides of the head and maybe accompanied by other symptoms such as aura, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, or even weakness.  Most migraine sufferers experience symptoms for an hour or longer. There can be many causes or contributing factors to recurrent migraines, read our previous post here on common triggers.

Here are my top two secrets to migraine prevention:

1. Find your triggers

Most migraine sufferers might know their triggers but often I find that it can be multiple triggers. Common triggers I see in my practice are hormonal changes, food allergies or intolerances, musculoskeletal triggers, nutrient deficiencies, and even stress can contribute. For optimal results, you have to find what your triggers maybe, the root cause (s), or migraines will continue to be persistent.

2. Help your body be less responsive to those triggers

***This is the key piece to the puzzle***

This is what most Western Medicine doctors either don’t know or are too busy to help. Prescription medication often do not correct imbalances or address the root cause (s) for long-term results. I can’t tell you how many times patients come in to my office and rely on emergency migraine medication to function, yet, still suffer from weekly or monthly migraines.

In our Migraine Program, the essence of what we do is help your body to be less responsive to those triggers so if and when you may get a migraine it is not debilitating and you no longer have to rely on medication. Wouldn’t that be nice!

What do the studies say?

In a recent 2020 study looking at how acupuncture can be used for prevention of migraines found this. They looked at patients with diagnosed episodic migraines without aura and found the frequency of acupuncture plays a role in the prevention of migraine attacks. The patients received 20 acupuncture sessions, 30 minutes each, over 8 weeks. Participants showed “at least a 50% reduction in the mean number of migraines days” following the study. What does this mean? Acupuncture done at a specific initial frequency can have long-term and lasting results. Most patients noticed a reduction in migraine attacks at weeks 17-20 after the study ended.

At Starting Point, we specialize in treating complex and chronic cases and migraines are definitely one of our our specialities. We use a comprehensive and integrated approach to help reduce the frequency and severity of attacks and for patients who follow our comprehensive treatment program actually get to the preventative stage, where you guessed it. We work to prevent migraine flares.

If you suffer from chronic migraines and are not getting long-term relief from standard therapies. Give our office a call at (425) 686-4498 to schedule your initial consultation to learn how we can help.

Sources:

Uptodate.com

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7249245/