Migraine Zapper

Posted on June 28, 2008

Around 30 million Americans suffer from migraines, with more than half requiring bed rest to get over an episode. That’s a lot of pain and a lot of lost work days. We were a migraine household as my wife suffered with them for over 25 years, finally finding improvement only with age. She was never able to manage them successfully with any kind of medication.

New research now suggests that drug-free techniques may be effective at relieving pain for some migraine sufferers, according to a study just presented at the annual American Headache Society meeting.

The device addresses a problem more often treated by drugs. People who frequently experience migraines may receive a preventive drug. Those who have migraines periodically may take both a preventive as well as an acute drug taken at the time the headache appears.
The treatment used in clinical trials consists of a magnetic stimulation device to treat patients who have auras. Those are the classic flashing or bright lights that many sufferers undergo that gives them a warning that a migraine is on the way.

Some migraines are preceded by the lights, thought to be about 30% of patients. For them, pain is inevitably on the way. Researchers have decided this is not just a warning sign but may actually be the trigger that starts the migraine.

So the idea behind this new device and its research is that it works by creating a focused magnetic pulse that passes non-invasively through the skull and induces an electric current that sends signals to disrupt the abnormal brainwaves.

This means of course that patients would need to have the device with them or have it available so they could apply the treatment whenever the aura occurred. If it works, it seems like it would alleviate the pain very quickly.

Since it acts in the case of an aura event, obviously a lot of people would get no benefit from it, but a subset of 9-10 million sufferers should be excited to see this come to market. If you or a family member or friend suffers with migraines preceded by the flashing lights, there may be help for you coming soon.