Scientists Prove that Yoga Can Help With Fighting Migraines
Tags: Migraines, Yoga, Science, Health, Medicine

We’ve all had to deal with having a headache.

Some of us get it regularly in stressful times, others might experience headaches when the weather changes, when they don’t drink enough (or too much, right?) or when they have other issues to deal with, like back pain or musculoskeletal problems.

Around 12% of people worldwide are suffering from migraines. Now, even though the term migraine might have been used ubiquitously to describe a very bad headache in the past, it is actually way worse than that.

Patients suffering from recurring migraine attacks can have various symptoms, reaching from extreme vulnerability to light and noises (phono- and photophobia), to vomiting, blurry vision, the inability to stand up straight, and — of course — a severe, pulsating headache. An attack can last from 30 minutes up to a whole day.

Migraines are hard to treat

Once an attack occurs, it knocks out the patient completely. He or she has to stay home from work, hide in a dark room, and will not be able to tolerate any light, loud noises or movements. In the long run, this can lead to complications like depression, sleep deprivation, and decreased quality of life.

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Of course, modern medicine offers medications to treat the disease. This includes pain medication, like ibuprofen or paracetamol, and also specific treatments like triptans that work centrally in the brain itself.

Nevertheless, a treatment for migraine can be tough. Some patients don’t respond to the offered treatment and have to try out multiple medications until they experience an improvement of symptoms. Triptans come with unwanted side effects and can lead to an increase in blood pressure, dizziness, ischemia of the heart muscle, and more. Plus, if taken for a long period of time, the migraine might stop to respond to triptans and the pain might come back even worse.

Multiple other treatments and supportive measurements have been proven to help with migraines. To decrease the frequency of attacks, patients are advised to avoid stress and to exercise at least three times a week.

Yoga might be a new potential therapeutic

In May 2020, a research group from New Deli in India published their results of the randomized clinical trial CONTAIN in the renowned journal Neurology, introducing a new and promising treatment option to help with migraines.

In the trial, 160 patients suffering from the disease were observed for three months. Before the trial started, they were randomly divided into two groups:

The first group received only the standard medications recommended for prophylactic and acute medical therapy.

The other group received a supervised regimen of yoga modules, consisting of 60-minute classes 3–5 times a week next to the standard medical treatment.

Both groups were assessed at baseline for their migraine severity and handed a headache log book to write down symptoms and attacks throughout the study. Patients were also asked to document any side medication. Multiple objective scales like the Migraine Disability Assessment questionnaire (MIDAS) and the Visual Analogue Scale were used to quantify symptoms.

The two groups were very comparable due to similar baseline demographic and clinical characteristics except for the yoga group showing a slightly increased baseline headache frequency before the trial when being compared to the group treated with medication only.

Promising results are highly significant

After three months of observation and follow-up examinations, patients in the yoga group showed a highly significant reduction of headache frequency, headache intensity and pill count.

Supervised yoga sessions helped with reducing stress and increasing relaxation. While other studies have suggested yoga sessions or meditation in the prodromal phase of an upcoming migraine attack, this study stresses the need for practicing Yoga on a regular basis.

In conclusion, this well-planned trial published in a well-known and critically reviewed medical journal shows the beneficial effect of add-on therapy with Yoga when being compared to medical therapy alone.

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Yoga can be studied by almost everyone and does not cause any unwanted side effects.

Moreover, it could effectively reduce the number of pills needed to treat the migraine after all. It is also cost-effective, making it very attractive to low-income countries.

Even though the study has only observed patients for the course of three months, the effect is assumed to last also for longer periods of time.

More studies will be needed to understand the biochemical and psychological changes yoga induces in the human body. Nevertheless, this study shows the need of integrating different therapeutically approaches to match a patient’s needs.