Return to the Treating Disease with Alternative Medicine index.
Return to the Treating Disease with Alternative Medicine index.
Oh, My Aching Head! Migraines and How to Relieve Them
Although we often hear about migraines being just a serious form of headache, in reality they don't necessarily show up as a headache at all! People can experience 'migraines' in other parts of their bodies besides the head.
The reason for this is that migraines involve the entire nervous system. And the condition isn't just there when someone is experiencing the pounding headache - it's still there lurking underneath the surface at other times as well.
Frustratingly, nobody seems to have a clear-cut effective way to fix the problem, at least not one that works all the time. In my practice I've had reasonably good success using acupuncture, dietary changes and herbal supplements to address the issue. Even so, I've found that every migraine is different and requires a fresh approach to the underlying systemic imbalance.
Steps To Take
There are several things that you can do to help reduce, and sometimes even eliminate the pain of migraines.
The first is identifying and avoiding migraine triggers. These vary from person to person, so each migraine sufferer has to find for themselves what factors act this way for them. Triggers can include foods, weather changes, strong odors (especially chemical odors), allergies and hormone changes.
The most common food triggers include aged cheese, deli meats, alcohol, nuts (especially peanuts), soy beans, caffeine, chocolate, bananas, MSG, Italian green beans, broad bean pods, yeast (especially in homemade bread and sourdough) and citrus fruits. Blood sugar swings can also trigger migraines, so it's best to eat frequent small meals and never to skip meals.
Some people feel as though stress can also be a trigger, however the recent consensus is that stress doesn't trigger the problem directly, but rather makes a person more susceptible to other triggers. Even so, stress reduction can help.
Hormone changes include puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, menopause and taking birth control pills (HRT). If any of these are triggers for you, consider acupuncture or Chinese herbal medicine to help bring your body back into balance.
Once you've got a handle on avoiding triggers there are nutritional supplements that can help you reduce the likelihood of symptoms. Here is a short list of useful ones to consider:
- Feverfew - a classic herbal migraine remedy
- Peppermint - used for headaches since ancient times
- Exercise - even something as simple as a regular 30-minute walk can go a long way to helping reduce symptoms
- Massage - if pressing in the area relieves the pain, this is a good approach. Be aware, however, that sometimes direct pressure can actually aggravate the pain. In this case, sometimes a foot massage will do wonders.
- Heat and cold - again, either can help or aggravate the pain. Careful, gentle experimentation with a cold pack wrapped in a towel on your neck might help. Alternatively, putting your hands in hot water sometimes does the trick.
- Supplements of magnesium, vitamin B2, calcium and fish oil can also be very helpful.
If these approaches don't dramatically reduce the problem, you may be experiencing spinal misalignment or an underlying systemic imbalance. For these, chiropractic (for the spinal issues) and acupuncture for the underlying systemic imbalances can often correct the problem.
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