Many common medication treatments for migraine may cause side effects that are difficult to tolerate, and can lead people to not take their medications as recommended, or to stop taking them altogether. A recent study suggests that up to 20% of patients with migraines have used opioids to treat their pain in the past year. Therefore, there is a great need for better and more tolerable treatments for people who have migraines.
Research has shown that combining behavioural treatments with preventive medication treatments works better for preventing headaches than medications alone. Mindfulness practice has also been associated with improvements in individuals with chronic pain, including migraine. Mindfulness is the mind-body treatment that involves purposely focusing one’s attention on the present momentary awareness and accepting it without judgement.
Stress is a well-known trigger for migraine. Moreover, stressful events have been associated with people experiencing more frequent or chronic migraines versus having them occasionally. Mindfulness can result in stress reduction, reduced emotional response to stress, and improved general happiness. In patients with migraine, pain severity and unpleasant symptoms can be reduced with this treatment.
Mindfulness can potentially strengthen emotional and cognitive control of pain by helping to train someone with migraine to reassess their pain in a nonjudgmental way and modify their evaluation of the pain. In addition, mindfulness practises can help to control depression, anxiety, and pain catastrophizing (an exaggerated negative feeling toward pain experiences), which can play a role in chronic migraine.