Approximately 10 million people live with migraine in the UK, 3 million workdays are lost every year due to migraine-related absenteeism costing almost £4.4 billion (NHSEngland2019).
However, the condition is still under-diagnosed and under-treated and public understanding of the condition is poor. (NHSrightcare2019)
Research suggests that 71 % of people with migraine feel it has significantly affected their mental health. (migrainetrust)
What is migraine?
Severe and painful long-term health condition, unlike headaches migraine attacks can be a whole-body experience.
A few symptoms of a ‘typical’ migraine involve; head pain, visual disturbances, sensitivity to noise/light/smells, fatigue, nausea and vomiting.
Symptoms can vary from one person to another. Migraines usually last between 4 hours and 3 days.
If you struggle with migraines the best thing to do is to keep a very thorough diary.
- Your doctor will ask you to complete one
- It will help you to identify any patterns or potential triggers
- When you are on treatment it will give you a reference to read back through to compare and see how you are responding to treatment.
What to keep a record of in this ‘diary’?
The more detail you have the easier it will be to recognise patterns or potential triggers.
The main ones include: when your migraine starts, symptoms, score the pain out of ten.
Here is a list of ideas of what to track.
| Time you wake up/go to bed | The weather |
| What you do? Work, walk, watch tv, etc. | Medications |
| Your environment. Lighting, temperature, etc. | Any lifestyle or hobbies. |
| What you eat and drink | |
| Mood/menstrual cycle |
Identify triggers?
Triggers are something that happens to you or something you do which results in a migraine. Interestingly migraines can occur from 6 hours – 2 days after the trigger.
Stress is a big one. A couple of common triggers that can be associated to work/stress:
Winding down at the weekend after a stressful week at work? TRIGGER
More sleep at weekends TRIGGER
Less caffeine at home than in work TRIGGER
Hormones/ time of the month? TRIGGER
I briefly mentioned food is important to record. I once met someone who found onions were a trigger, that’s why keeping a diary is such an important task. I’ll admit it’s not easy, life does get in the way, and it is monotonous. But it may help.
Low blood sugar does not cause migraines, but attacks are more likely to happen, and the symptoms can be worse if your blood sugar levels are low. So, try not to skip meals. If you are dieting to lose weight, do it gradually over a longer period. This will also make it easier to keep the weight off in the long run. Do you get a headache when you wake up? Try having a little healthy snack before you go to bed.
All this information and advice is available from migrainetrust.org
The National Institute for Health Care and Excellence (NICE) recommends acupuncture for chronic (long-term) pain, chronic tension-type headaches and migraines.
A systematic review was conducted in 2018 researching acupuncture effectiveness for treating migraines without auras. This research concluded that acupuncture was effective at reducing the frequency of migraines. Participants preferred acupuncture due to the lack of adverse effects (Xu et al 2018).
Personally, migraines and headaches are one of my favourite conditions to treat. I have suffered migraines, but I am fortunate not to struggle anymore. But when I did, I had severe pain, nausea, visual disturbances and feeling very weak. I had to go into a dark room and try to sleep it off. So, I have a certain level of understanding how debilitating they can be.
However, symptoms of migraines are vast, there are several types of migraines, and dealing with them, your own experiences, work and family commitments all play a part in how you cope with migraines.
As an acupuncturist, I aim to help reduce your migraine attacks. I have been a qualified acupuncturist for 9 years and have seen so many individuals from all walks of life suffer with headaches and migraines. Whilst at university, the onsite clinic held a pilot pain clinic to help the backlog of patients at Wrexham hospital. Here I saw mainly back pain and headache/migraine patients.
I’ll admit I am not in the ‘curing’ business. I’m not a miracle worker. If you are in a highly stressed job, work with children or loud machinery, and you find these are your triggers… acupuncture may help reduce pain but will only be on a short-term basis.
In some cases, headaches/migraines completely go after a treatment, in others it can take a couple of hours, or even the next day until they ease.
In majority of my headache/migraine cases, after a course of treatments, they then see me on a monthly-ish basis for a top up treatment to maintain their health and wellbeing to keep those migraines away.
To start with I’d highly recommend you book in for treatment. We can discuss, you, your symptoms, your wellbeing in more detail, you can have a session of acupuncture and see and feel what it is all about. You can withdraw from treatment at any time. If you decide you don’t want to proceed you can always change your mind. I am only here to help!
There is a lot of research on acupuncture and migraine relief. In addition, acupuncture can help with other triggers too such as reducing stress, anxiety, regulating your hormones, reducing teeth grinding and tensing muscles.
P.s Hannah is also trained in sports massage, you can book in for a massage to help ease tension especially head, neck and shoulders.
Links and more interesting reads:
https://migrainetrust.org/live-with-migraine/self-management/common-triggers/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2095496418300761
https://www.england.nhs.uk/rightcare/toolkits/headache-and-migraine-toolkit
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2021.674852/full
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurology/articles/10.3389/fneur.2020.00596/full