When I was very young I experienced something that can knock you flat on your back even as a full-grown adult: Migraine headaches.
After becoming a medical practitioner, migraines were one of the first things I set out to help people overcome. Through my personal experience and years of helping patients, I have created both daily plans to prevent them, and self-care models for acute strikes.
Like everything related to health and wellness, I am not pro this and con that. I believe if it works use it – but at the appropriate time.
If you can alter your sleep patterns to reduce sleep-deprivation headaches, that’s easier, safer and less toxic than continuing to sleep fewer hours and taking an over-the-counter pain reliever the next day.
That’s just one example, but I’m always on the lookout for new approaches to migraine and headache treatment.
Just the other day I saw a new intervention that I want to tell you about. But first, let me show you why and how you get migraines, and then we’ll explore what you can do to stop them.
What are migraines?
Headaches and migraines are not the same thing, exactly. A migraine is a type or classification of headache, but it’s really a neurological disorder syndrome.
A syndrome is a collection of symptoms that you get stemming from a similar cause. Symptoms of migraine can include visual aura (bright lights, lines, or distortion of sight), intense pain on one side of the head or behind one eye, nausea, vomiting, heightened sensitivity to light, smells, touch and sounds, or vertigo-like dizziness.
Migraine attacks can last from several hours to several days. Some of my worst lasted nearly a week. And, they can be triggered by another headache type, or worsen with physical or psychological stress.
If you have migraines, you know that you can get a little stressed out and anxious wondering when you might have an attack … which itself might trigger a migraine.
Or you may have experienced depression and fatigue because of the extreme nature of the pain and suffering, and the life-altering nature of migraine attacks.
Steps toward a cure
The only cure for migraines is to prevent them. This can be a bit tough because there are so many triggers.
Fortunately, I’ve helped countless people use many effective prevention models and treatments.
One that might work for you that people have written in and told me was very effective is to use a combination of food and supplements.
Another effective method for preventing migraines is to use what I call a “Mind and Body protocol.”
Or, you can also try a very specific, targeted protocol and I call “Controlling for Triggers.”
What to do at the first sign of a migraine
If you haven’t found a prevention model that works for you all the time, then it’s important to recognize the signals your body sends that you’re getting a migraine, and to take medication right away.
If you don’t, you’re leaving yourself open to experience the full force of the pain … and at that point, the medications are usually no longer effective.
Even showers, ice packs, analgesics, and sleep don’t seem to help. At this point many want to scrape their head on the bathroom tiles, or pray for mercy. When I was a kid, I wanted to hide in a dark corner…
The good news is, there’s a new product that is minimally invasive and could help.
Relief is a spray away?
Without any outside funding, Dr. Kenneth Mandato and associates at the Albany Medical Center in Albany, NY, have come a long way to helping relieve migraine pain, severity and occurrence.
They’re discovered a minimally invasive treatment using a type of “migraine spray.” As you’re reading this, they will have just presented the findings of their independent study at the annual meeting of the Society of Interventional Radiology in Atlanta, GA.
From there they seek peer-review in journal publication. Thanks to their news release, we don’t have to wait so long to hear first news of their findings and their product.
The first thing I noticed is that the study for migraine reduction and prevention was not done by neurologists or by Big Pharma. Dr. Mandato and his team of radiologist partners carried it out.
Their new procedure “significantly alleviates” the pain associated with migraine.
It works very simply and non-invasively by spraying a local anesthetic called Lidocaine (Xylocaine) directly on the nerves located inside the nasal cavity.
To administer the Lidocaine solution, researchers inserted a small catheter into the nasal passages of each of the 112 patient participants. All 112 participants were previously identified as being affected by cluster headaches, and their migraine symptoms and pain levels were assessed.
Researchers delivered a dose of the solution to the cluster of nerves located at the back of the nasal cavity, known as the Meckel’s ganglion. There nerves are associated with the trigeminal nerve, which is now believed to be largely associated with headaches, both general and migraine.
The researchers believe that the Lidocaine somehow “short-circuits this neural highway’s pathway associated with recurrent headaches or migraines.”
It must work, because a single treatment reduced pain levels of a migraine episode from a self-reported 8 (out of 10) to a 4 (out of 10). What’s more, the 35 percent pain reduction lasted a full month after the treatment.
In fact, 94 percent of the people in the study found fast and lasting pain relief, which is a very strong indicator of good things to come.
If you’ve ever needed to have an analgesic injection for migraines, then the news most promising about this treatment is that you won’t have to worry anymore about toxicity that can harm to the liver, kidneys and GI tract.
And at some point, you might be able to have a spray bottle that you use maybe twice a year, and carry with you for emergencies.
I look forward to more tests and peer review. We need to see the long-term effects to the nerves as a result of the direct Lidocaine application. I’ll be keeping an eye out and will update you as I learn more.
In the meantime, please use the protocols I outlined above and use the one that works best for you.
Reference
Nerve Treatment Via Nose Shows Promise Against Migraines
