Migraine Treatment At Home:
If you’ve ever put an ice pack on an injury or a heating pad on a sore back, you know the power of temperature therapy. Here are 12 tips you can try to help treat your migraine early and keep try what he says it from getting worse. If you have a tension headache, place a heating pad on your neck or the back of your head. If you have a sinus headache, hold a warm cloth to the area that hurts.
Your body may have a sensitivity to specific chemicals and preservatives in foods. This sensitivity makes a migraine more likely to happen, especially if combined with other triggers. There is some evidence that acupressure’a traditional Chinese medical approach involving applying pressure on a specific part of the body’may help you manage the pain. The presence or absence of caffeine, as in coffee or certain teas, can affect the dilation of the vessels. Both too much of this substance or withdrawal from it can bring on migraines.
And these are also newer medications, so we don’t know about long-term side effects. The OTC medication you use depends on your own health and what other medications you already take. You should talk to your doctor about which medication makes sense for you. If gearing up and heading outside isn’t for you, there are many ways to move against migraine inside. Prefers an indoor routine, so she practices yoga and stretching every morning. ‘It sets the stage for my day and makes me feel like I’ve already won,’ she says.
Other treatments’which include lifestyle strategies, medical interventions, or medications’are helpful for preventing migraine episodes. Treatment options vary, from acute treatment to relieve symptoms to preventive treatment to reduce the number of attacks you experience. There are also behavioral treatment options and lifestyle changes that can help. An extensive 2020 systematic review looked at studies that evaluated the effectiveness of acupuncture for treating migraine. The study authors found that acupuncture was a safe and effective treatment choice for people with migraine headaches. Remedies including caffeine, massage, and over-the-counter pain relievers may help ease migraine pain in some people.
Try keeping a headache diary and noting the frequency, intensity, and duration of attacks. Log what you discover is triggering the condition, and avoid triggers as much as possible. While migraine itself is not dangerous, some types of headaches can be dangerous, according to Dr. Hindiyeh. ‘These kinds of headaches would require emergency care, and you’d need to go and be checked out,’ she says. Some over-the-counter (OTC) medications can work to inhibit the inflammation and pain that builds during migraines, according to Dr. Ailani.
Migraine episodes can usually be treated with OTC medication or prescription therapies, but at-home care is also an important part of getting relief from your migraine. Usually, treating a migraine episode right at the beginning’or even before it starts’is more effective than waiting it out. Migraine treatment includes preventive strategies, as well as treatment for an acute migraine. Preventive strategies include lifestyle modifications, devices, medication, and procedures. Migraine prevention is an important aspect of living with this condition. Certain lifestyle strategies and medical treatments are known to be effective at preventing repeated migraines.
Identifying triggers and some treatments may help prevent episodes. If you’re already dealing with MOH, you may need specialized care from a certified headache specialist. That care will likely include tapering off acute medications and starting a robust preventive regimen. It may even include in-patient treatment with daily IV treatments of medications that are not safe to use without close in-patient monitoring.
A disadvantage of antiemetics for migraine treatment is that they may cause focal muscle dystonia, a rare but distressing side effect in which you have muscle spasms or stiffening. Migraines are a type of headache that causes head pain and other symptoms, such as dizziness, fatigue, and nausea. ‘Lifestyle modifications are one of the most important things that can help and prevent migraine,’ said Dr. Hindiyeh. The migraine brain is triggered by irregularity, so maintaining a routine and regularity can be helpful, she explains. Taking over-the-counter pain relievers like aspirin, acetaminophen and ibuprofen can aggravate how often you have migraines. While stress is an inevitable part of life, making lifestyle changes to manage your stress can also decrease the number and severity of your migraines.
Like triptan medications, it’s a serotonin receptor agonist. However, triptans work on a specific subtype of receptor that narrows blood vessels. Lasmitidan does not work on that subtype of receptor, so it does not have a narrowing effect on the blood vessels. This is great for people who had success using triptans but had to stop using them after having a heart attack or stroke. Migraines affect about 12% of Americans, according to the National Library of Medicine. Researchers often link migraines to genetic mutations in your brain.
Migraine may be the most common kind of debilitating headache attack, but it’s hardly the only one. Conditions like cluster headache, trigeminal neuralgia, occipital neuralgia, hypnic headache, and post-traumatic brain injury headache can also cause painful headache attacks. When people are in pain that over-the-counter analgesics can’t handle, they may ask their healthcare providers about prescription pain treatments like opioids. There are as-needed treatments to stop symptoms of a migraine attack (acute treatment) and long-term treatments to decrease the frequency and severity of migraine attacks (preventive treatment).
Reducing your stress can also help ‘ or doing things like dimming the lights or using a cold washcloth on your forehead if the pain is too great. A recent meta-analysis found that obese patients who lose weight experience a significant reduction here in migraine frequency. And when migraines occur after weight loss, the attacks are often less severe and shorter. You might have tried some alternative therapies, but did you know about these complementary and integrative treatments?
Opioid painkillers are not recommended as first-line acute treatments for migraine attacks as they are typically not as effective as other migraine treatments and carry the risk of addiction. Preventing migraine attacks is a better strategy than dealing with them when they’re severe enough to require emergency care. There are some people who only need a rescue or an acute over here treatment for migraine because they have infrequent migraine attacks. But there are other people who are having frequent migraine attacks, maybe two or three times a week. If they used rescue treatments for every attack, it could potentially lead to other complications. Those individuals need a preventive treatment regimen to reduce the frequency and severity of attacks.
UPMC HealthBeat is the publishing website for UPMC, an integrated health care system based in Pittsburgh. Articles published on this site go through several rounds of review before publishing, including a clinical review conducted by UPMC medical experts. If you get migraines often, you should see your doctor to rule out any other causes.
Headache frequency and intensity were reduced more in those receiving both yoga therapy and conventional care than in those receiving conventional care alone (49). A 2021 review that included 6 studies found that treatment with 30’800 mg of CoQ10 per day was effective for reducing migraine frequency and duration (40). Studies suggest that cold therapy may benefit those experiencing certain types of headaches, including headaches caused by nitrate medication used to treat heart conditions like chest pain (37).