Remember that in many cases lifestyle changes can affect your headaches, such as exercising more or less or indulging in takeaway. And while it is true that most of us don’t have any control over the amount of stressors in our lives, we do have choices about how we manage our stress. Therefore, your first step should always be good self-care. You won’t be able to do your work or tend to your family if you don’t first take care of yourself.
Let’s now take a look at CAM A to Z for headaches.
CAM A to Z
We will be discussing:
• Acupuncture
• Acupressure
• Biofeedback
• Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
• Electrical or Frequency Stimulation
• Homeopathy
• Hypnotherapy
• Magnetic Stimulation
• Manipulation
• Massage
• Meditation
• Qi gong
• Reiki
• Resperate
• Supplements and herbs
• Visualization/Guided Imagery
Acupuncture
Acupuncture is a TCM with more than 3,000 years of evidence behind it. TCM treats energy centers and pathways in the body, such as meridians and channels, with thin metal needles inserted into the skin. These might be twirled, tapped, connected to each other with wire, or even connected to a small power cell in order to have electricity run through them. The purpose is to unblock the life force energy known as chi (CHEE, also spelled qi). This is whole body medicine and energy medicine, so the needles might be inserted in various places to ‘fine tune’ your energy, or in what you might consider to be odd parts of the body, like the hand, to relieve headache.
Acupressure
Acupressure is very similar to acupuncture, but without the needles, making it an increasingly popular CAM option. Instead of needles, the tips of the fingers or the knuckles might ‘dig in’ to put pressure on the meridians and pathways. As with acupuncture, the practitioner might suggest certain lifestyle changes and possibly a course of herbs as well.
Some people will go for about 10 treatments and then visit every so often to maintain the balance of their chi. Others will go for acupuncture or acupressure regularly as a preventive measure to try to stay headache-free.
Biofeedback
Once the butt of a lot of jokes because it was considered to be ‘quackery’, a growing body of research demonstrating the benefits of biofeedback boosted its acceptance and popularity in recent years, particularly in reference to headache relief.
Biofeedback can prevent or reduce the pain of headache. However, it is most effective when included with other forms of headache prevention.
There are three forms of biofeedback used to treat headaches:
• Thermal
• Muscular (EMG)
• Brain wave (EEG)
Let’s look at each of these briefly.
