Migraine Help From Mindfulness And Meditation

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

According to Psychology Today, the practice of meditation began in the Indus Valley around 5,000 to 3,500 BCE. Since this time, most of the world’s major religions have adopted some form of meditation practice as part of their spiritual development.

Modern Western medicine has begun to investigate the health benefits — both mental and physical — of meditation and mindfulness practices. So far, it has been shown to affect gene expression, work as an effective stress relief mechanism, help with PTSD, and lower blood pressure, among others. A new study, led by Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, now shows that mindfulness and meditation might also be the path to migraine relief.

Stress is a well-known trigger for headaches and research supports the general benefits of mind/body interventions for migraines, but there hasn’t been much research to evaluate specific standardized meditation interventions,” said Rebecca Erwin Wells, M.D., assistant professor of neurology at Wake Forest Baptist.

To assess the safety, feasibility, and effects of a standardized meditation and yoga intervention known as mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) in adults with migraines, the researchers recruited 19 participants. The participants were separated into two groups: 10 received MBSR intervention, the remaining 9 received standard medical care. The MBSR patients attended eight weekly classes to learn the techniques, then instructed to practice 45 minutes on their own for at least five more days each week.

Using objective measures of disability, self-efficacy and mindfulness, the patients were assessed both before and after the trial period. They were also required to keep a headache journal throughout the study period, paying special attention to frequency, severity and duration of headaches.

“We found that the MBSR participants had trends of fewer migraines that were less severe,” Wells said. “Secondary effects included headaches that were shorter in duration and less disabling, and participants had increases in mindfulness and self-efficacy — a sense of personal control over their migraines. In addition, there were no adverse events and excellent adherence.”

Time.com reports that the MBSR group’s number of headaches didn’t reduce significantly (only 1.4 fewer per month than the control group), but they were significantly shorter — up to three hours shorter per headache.

“They were able to have a sense of personal control over their migraines,” Wells, Wake Forest assistant professor of neurology, said according to Time.com reporter Mandy Oaklander. “It really makes us wonder if an intervention like meditation can change the way people interpret their pain.”

Wells’ team concludes that MBSR is safe and feasible as a therapy for adults with migraines. They do caution, however, that the sample size for this study was too small to detect statistically significant changes in migraine frequency or severity. On the other hand, the secondary outcomes demonstrated this intervention had a beneficial effect on headache duration, disability, self-efficacy and mindfulness.

The team has planned further research with larger sample sizes to further evaluate the impact and mechanisms of this type of intervention in adults with migraines.

“For the approximate 36 million Americans who suffer from migraines, there is big need for non-pharmaceutical treatment strategies, and doctors and patients should know that MBSR is a safe intervention that could potentially decrease the impact of migraines,” Wells said.

The findings have been published in the online edition of Headache.

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