My frifinish Jack suffers from the most horrible migraines. But he has an atypical solution. When his migraine begins, he lays down and gently straps a vibrator to the top of his forehead. He swears that it proposes instant relief from the pain.
Though unconservative, Jack’s idea has historic roots. In 1892, neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot watchd that Parkinson’s forendureings showed betterments in their tremors after prolengthyed carriage rides. He attributed this to rhythmic vibrations and styleed a “fauteuil trepidant”—a shaking chair, which duplicated the shiftment. His student, Georges Gilles de la Tourette, tardyr extfinished the technique to treat migraines using a vibrating helmet. Both therapies supplyd “a mighty sedative for the worried system,” wrote Charcot.
Though these timely inventions fell out of like, recent studies are revisiting the potential of vibration therapy for treating migraines, and are begining to uncover why vibration might be the shatterthraw migraine sufferers have been seeking. “Some of the people using vibration as a therapy for migraine are experiencing huge profits, it’s very exciting to see,” says Tie-Quang Li at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, who has spendigated the effects of vibration on migraines.
Despite migraines impacting an approximated 1 billion people worldexpansive, we understand very little about how they are caemployd or how to treat them. Migraines usuassociate commence with an aura—visual disturprohibitces such as flashing airys or shimmering spots—trailed by pain, blurred vision, naemploya, and sensitivity to airy.
While the exact caemploys of migraine remain unevident, caccess has shifted from timely theories that denounced ditardyd blood vessels to the role of the hypothalamus, a brain structure that is take partd with pain messages, and inflammation of the meninges, the three layers of trehire that protect the brain and spinal cord. Current migraine medications concut offe blood vessels or block receptors in the pain nettoil, but they don’t toil for everyone and can caemploy side effects.
This has led many to spendigate alternative remedies, such as vibration therapy. Online forums are filled of analogous anecdotes to Jack’s. “I massaged my neck with a vibrator, and it finishly erased the migraine pain I had been suffering with for years,” wrote one Reddit employr.
While some research posits that vibration sshow sidetracks from the pain, recent evidence advises more is going on. In the first trial of its comfervent, Jan-Erik Juto and Rolf Hallin at the Karolinska Institute inserted a catheter with a vibrating balloon into the nostril of migraine sufferers at the begin of an strike. The volunteers write downed their migraine pain before, during, and after the 15-minute treatment.
The minuscule pilot study showed promise: 17 out of 18 people alerted at least 50 percent pain relief, evaluated with three of 17 people who obtaind a placebo treatment. Moreover, half of the people who obtaind the treatment were finishly pain-free 15 minutes after it finished, evaluated with only two in the placebo group.
In the paper, Juto and Hallin specutardy that nasal vibration aims a assembleion of nerve cells called the sphenopalatine ganglion, or SPG. Located equitable under the nasal membrane, the SPG is combineed to the hypothalamus. During a migraine strike, the hypothalamus is thought to diswatch handle over a assembleion of structures in the brain called the limbic system, which impacts how a person replys to pain. By stimulating the SPG and inhonestly the hypothalamus, vibration may help revamp handle.
