Collin County Living Well Magazine September/October 2017 | Page 36

New
Help for
Migraines
By Brenda Briscoe, LMT
H
ave you ever had a throbbing headache that
took you out for the day? One that amplified
every slight sound and brightened every light
beyond what you could bear? If not, you are
one of the lucky ones. But almost all of us know
someone who suffers like this.
Some people get headaches so severe that they become
nauseous and even incoherent in their thinking. Some see
auras, which could be dots, wavy lines, flashing lights,
blind spots or colors. Others have difficulty with speech,
sensation, or movement. Any of these symptoms are typical
of migraine headaches.
What triggers these symptoms in the brain? Researchers
don’t understand it exactly, but they do know that certain
foods, changes in weather, lack of sleep and, of course,
stress can be a major factor in bringing on a migraine
attack in one out of 200 people. That, however, doesn’t
explain why these variables do not cause other people to
react in this way to the same stimuli.
Neuroscientists have been studying migraines for years
and now believe these attacks to be firstly a disturbance
in nerve function, rather than a disorder of the brain’s
blood vessels. It seems that a wave of electrical activ-
ity passing through the trigeminal nerve sends signals to
the face and releases chemicals that cause inflammation.
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COLLIN COUNTY Living Well Magazine | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017
This inflammation makes the nerves more sensitive to
pain and causes blood vessels near the brain to expand
and irritate the centrally located nerves in the brain. In
addition, lymphatic fluid coming to the rescue also in-
creases pressure on the nerves.
This wave of electrical activity, which begins in the tri-
geminal nerve on the side of the face enters the brain
and ripples across the surface of the brain. In fact, re-
searchers have linked this wave to the experience of
‘aura’ particularly as it spreads across the visual part of
the brain.
With a couple of new therapies, there is no need to know
the exact cause of the migraine. Bowen Therapy, as well as
LED light therapy, seem to successfully address a migraine,
reducing the inflammation, no matter the origin. For the first
20 minutes of the session, the migraine sufferer wears a
simple LED “head harness,” which induces relaxation. This
device consists of 20% red and 80% near-infrared thera-
peutic grade LED lights. The near-infrared lights drain the
excess fluid from the brain so that there is less pressure on
the central nerves, thereby calming the inflammation.
After this LED phototherapy is completed, a hands-on ma-
nipulation of the fascia and nerves, called Bowen Thera-
py, is applied. From the very beginning of a Bowen ses-
sion, the heightened and highly sensitive nervous system
is down-regulated from the fight-or-flight (sympathetic) to
the rest-and-relaxation (parasympathetic) response phase
of the autonomic nervous system. In this modality, the ner-
vous system is given brand new signals which modulate
the brain’s activity, so that the pain/spasm/pain cycle is