When you feel a headache coming on, an alternative (and healthier) approach to popping a pill could be taking some yoga time out.

Here are yoga poses to relieve headaches.

For centuries men and women have seen yoga as a solution to peace and wellbeing, and a feeling of being at one with your environment. However, studies have shown that yoga has many other benefits, too, one of them being treatment for certain types of headaches.

A 2014 study found that headache frequency and intensity was reduced in people who practised yoga in addition to their regular treatment regimen. Experts in the industry agree.

Dr Elliot Shevel, medical director of The Headache Clinic, says regular exercise is frequently recommended for migraine treatment. Many studies have reported beneficial effects of aerobic exercise on both frequency and intensity of migraines as well as on the duration of the attacks and on the patient’s wellbeing. However, around 22% of migraine patients complain that exercise was a trigger factor and hence some patients avoid exercise and are physically less active, he adds.

How it works

In yoga, slower movements or static muscular exercises are performed with mindfulness, and you focus on your poses while you work. You have to feel the movements and develop awareness of your body and body motion. This is why yoga, a slow non-exertional aerobic exercise, is more beneficial than pure aerobic exercise. ‘Studies have shown that yoga is better than aerobic exercise at enhancing mood and alleviating stress and depression,’ says Dr Shevel.

The use of yoga in the treatment of illness is not new. It’s effective in treating numerous chronic diseases such as asthma, diabetes, arthritis, fibromyalgia, depression and ischemic heart disease, where stress is believed to play an important role. In headaches and migraines in particular, stress is one of the most common triggers.

Bruce Burger from Living Yoga suggests the following poses from BKS Iyengar’s book Light on Yoga:

The study, published in Workplace Health and Safety, examined the effects of a neck stretching exercise intervention on nurses’ primary headaches. It used a pre-test and post-test two-group design with a total of 60 female staff nurses employed by a medical center in Taiwan.

Participants in the experimental group (a total of 30 patients) practiced neck stretching exercises while experiencing headaches. The participants in the control group (the other 30 patients) managed their headaches as they would usually do.

According to Dr. Elliot Shevel, South Africa’s migraine surgery pioneer and the medical director of The Headache Clinic, a structured questionnaire was used to collect data on headache intensity at baseline, and at 30 minutes and 1 hour after intervention.

“Decrease in headache intensity of the experimental group was significantly larger than that of the control group,” says Shevel. “The conclusion was that neck stretching exercises is an effective method for treating primary headaches.”

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Migraine affects one in five women. Sufferers are all too familiar with the throbbing, often one-sided headache made worse by any movement, the crippling nausea, sometimes with vomiting, and the acute sensitivity to light, sound, smells and/or touch.

Doctors now recognise migraine as a complex neurological condition with several distinct stages.

What causes migraine?

Until recently, migraine was often attributed to the widening of blood vessels inside the head. Experts now believe that the cause of migraines is due to certain brain regions being oversensitive to some stimuli, such as dehydration, sleeping too much or too little, skipping a meal, strong smells, sunlight, even eating certain foods or changes in weather. These stimuli excite the trigeminal nerve ( the main sensory nerve in the head), causing it to release chemicals that transmit pain signals to the brain and inflame (widen) the blood vessels.

New research also points to muscle tension in the jaw and neck aggravating the trigeminal nerve, setting off the same chain of events. Before pain sets in, one in five sufferers have auras – unnerving neurological disturbances, such as seeing stars, or blind spots in visions, trouble finding words; and feeling tingling and numbness, or even vertigo.

To read more on this article by Women and Home, visit the related web post.

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