Migraines are debilitating, painful, and many times debilitating enough to keep you homebound. Stressing about your migraines can lead to even more pain, so relaxing your mind through meditation could be the key to enjoying a pain-free life.
Meditation and relaxation techniques can help relieve the pain of migraines and even prevent the onset of migraines. The trick is finding the right technique—and knowing how to access it since migraines can be triggered by stress.
How Can Mindfulness Practices Help With Migraine?
Mindfulness practices can help your migraines if the practices are actually working for you. Most of us know that meditation can reduce stress, but migraine sufferers often avoid meditation because of the intensity of the pain. But meditation can help people cope with migraine by teaching them to ground themselves in the present and ignore thoughts about the pain. Being mindful can also help us notice and ignore other pain triggers, like loud noises or stress.
One study showed mindfulness techniques helped cancer patients to feel better, sleep better, and cope better with stress. Mindfulness practices can also improve symptoms of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Mindfulness is the practice of being present in the moment, and it’s being increasingly used in health care and medicine. Meditation, in particular, has tremendous benefits for migraine sufferers, relieving suffering and preventing attacks.
How does a Migraine Affect The Brain?
Migraine headaches are more than just a throbbing pain behind your eyes. They can affect your senses and lead to nausea, fever, droopy eye movements, and extreme sensitivity to light. Migraines can range from mild to severe and can last from a few hours to several days, making even basic daily activities like working or attending school difficult.
A migraine is more than just a headache—it’s a neurological disorder that can severely disrupt your quality of life. Debilitating pain, nausea, and sensitivity to light, sound, and smell are just a few of the symptoms of a migraine. But migraine affects the brain, too—with the condition’s name coming from the Latin word for “spinning wheel.”
Migraines affect every part of the brain and body, from how vision works to memory, thinking, mood, sleep, and other functions. The symptoms vary by individual, but migraine may be triggered when blood vessels in the brain widen, cutting off blood flow. The condition usually starts as a pounding or pulsing feeling, called an aura, that manifests as lightheadedness, nausea, or numbness.
Benefits Of Meditation For Migraine
Meditation has been used as a treatment for multiple ailments for many years, and now that research is beginning to show positive results, doctors have begun prescribing meditation to migraine patients.
A growing number of studies are showing that meditation can help with migraines. But does meditation have any effect at all on migraines? No, meditation won’t cure your chronic migraines, but it may help to relieve some of the symptoms and to train your mind to be less reactive to them. If you’re looking for additional treatment options for migraine, you can check out migraine clinical trials at Power.
Meditation Has Been a Help To:
- Reduce stress
Meditation can relieve stress and tension, which some research has linked to migraines. Meditation involves connecting to your inner self, and that connection to your higher self can reduce stress, which can reduce the frequency of migraines.
Migraines can often stem from stress, and stress is one of the most common triggers for migraine attacks. Meditation has been shown to help reduce stress, reduce symptoms, and prevent attacks and triggers.
- Improve sleep quality
Meditation is a practice that can be done every day to quiet your mind, clear your mind, and reduce stress. While meditation can be helpful for easing the symptoms of many health conditions, it can also benefit your migraine control. Meditation can help you sleep better, which is an important component of migraine prevention.
- Increase feelings of well-being
Migraines can have debilitating symptoms, such as debilitating headaches, nausea, and vomiting. People with migraines may miss days of work and experience significant stress. Meditation can be an effective way to manage migraines as they arise. Meditation can help reduce migraine pain, calm the mind, and help a person cope with migraine symptoms.
- Reduce migraine frequency
Meditation can help migraine patients by reducing the frequency of headache attacks. Mindfulness meditation (MM) helps migraine patients to relax, focus, and redirect their attention from pain to the present moment. Patients are instructed to focus their attention on their breathing while observing thoughts, feelings, and sensations. MM reduces both migraine pain and headache frequency.
Migraines can be debilitating. One minute you’re fine; the next minute, you’re completely incapacitated. Migraines can be caused by a variety of things, including stress, diet, and lack of sleep, but meditation is an increasingly popular alternative. Research suggests that meditation may help migraine sufferers by reducing the frequency of their attacks.