Migraine and headache patients are used to popping pills to manage their pain, but not every remedy comes from the medicine cabinet. These seven alternative therapies might be your answer to pain relief.
Migraine and headache patients are used to popping pills to manage their pain, but not every remedy comes from the medicine cabinet. These seven alternative therapies might be your answer to pain relief.
30 HEAD WISE | Volume 1, Issue 3 • 2011
Adopting a gluten-free diet has helped Seattle attorney Sarah Lawer control her migraine pain.
The Perfect Complement
By Allecia Vermillion
Amos Morgan
Since childhood,
Seattle attorney Sarah Lawer has been plagued by migraines brought on by exercise and heat. But as she grew up, her migraine triggers evolved.
“ All my life, I’ ve just tried to power through headaches,” Lawer says.“ But you get them and eventually you can’ t ignore them.”
Like most migraineurs, she was willing to try almost any- thing to make the pain go away. Over the years, she experimented with a host of prescriptions and non-traditional therapies, including massage, acupuncture and biofeedback, each resulting in varying degrees of success.
Ultimately, it was ridding her diet of gluten that helped Lawer manage her migraine pain. According to the National Headache Foundation( NHF), the diet that she has followed is unusual and used primarily for celiac disease. Its effects could be due to many other factors, such as: age; spontaneous remission, which often occurs; a change in lifestyle; or the elimination of many of the multiple triggers associated with migraine. Most clinicians believe that in about 30 percent of migraine sufferers, diet can be a factor. Migraine patients are particularly susceptible to changes in lifestyle, such as missing a meal, oversleeping, fatigue and dieting. The food and beverage items that are most often cited as triggers to a migraine attack include chocolate, cheese, fermented or pickled foods, caffeine, and alcoholic beverages— in particular, red wine. For most migraine and headache sufferers, managing head pain is a simple matter of taking prescription or over-thecounter medications. For some unfortunate individuals, drugs just don’ t work.
This uncertainty leads many people to try complementary or alternative therapies, a range of techniques that can be used in tandem with traditional medications. Some of these approaches have proven effective in clinical trials, while others have largely anecdotal support.
“ If a person believes in it, there’ s a chance it might work,” says Kathleen Farmer, PsyD, a psychologist with the Headache Care Center in Springfield, Mo.
Here are seven common complementary therapies— many of them relatively inexpensive— that could be your key to migraine and headache relief.