Acupuncture for Migraines

Migraine suffers know the feeling that a storm is about to come. Often it is a literal storm. The pressure changes, the air gets heavy, and your head starts throbbing. Other times it is a stress storm. Work or family gets intense, you are spread thin and not taking a moment for yourself, until your body shuts down and forces you to take that time.

Acupuncture can get rid of a migraine headache immediately. If the headache is present at the moment of the treatment, we actually focus our work on the feet. Very often, when someone has a migraine headache, their feet are tight and cold. By warming and relaxing the feet, blood descends out the head, and then the nervous system can settle. This combined with manual massage techniques on the arms, shoulders and neck, can clear up even a severe migraine headache.

All of these techniques - moxibustion heat therapy to warm muscles and open the blood vessels, acupuncture to relax muscles and redirect blood flow, massage to move fluids and muscles and to relax nerves - fall into the practice we simply call “acupuncture”.

But the most important work is preventative medicine. People who suffer from chronic migraines usually need a series of acupuncture treatments to significant reduce the frequency and intensity of migraines. How many sessions and how often depends on how severe the migraines are, how long they’ve been around, and your overall health.

The third aspect of natural migraine treatment focuses on that last thing, overall health. Health comes from eating well, restful sleep, stress reduction and emotional balance. Acupuncture can stop chronic migraines in a few weeks or months, but your body will still be prone to get them. That means that a period of high stress or bad sleep can still bring a migraine on.

To change the tendency to get migraines, we have to change the patterns of the body and mind. This work is the slow and steady practice of relaxed, even breathing; of eating a balanced diet, low in sugar and refined foods that create inflammation; of getting to sleep by 10pm or 11pm every night (or as regularly as possible); of regular movement like daily walks, Tai Chi and Qigong; of mindfulness and meditation to change mental habits towards calmness, clarity, and tranquility; and of spending time in nature, as much time as possible.

This work is called yangsheng, “nourishing life”. Yangsheng is the real heart of acupuncture and natural medicine. Acupuncture, herbs, supplements are simply tools to help us do yangsheng better, more often and more deeply.

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Henry practices acupuncture and natural medicine in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He also teaches Tai Chi and Qigong, and teaches acupuncture courses at undergraduate and professional levels.

Cover photo by Anh Nguyen on Unsplash.