Sleep well and you might reduce your migraines, says Anne Calhoun, MD and an associate professor of neurology at the University of North Carolina Medical School.
She conducted an experiment with sleep behavior-modification on women with transformed migraine - it's when episodic headaches become chronic.
Here are the guidelines participants had to follow:
- schedule eight hours of time in bed each night
- not to read or watch television or listen to music in bed
- limit their fluid intake beginning two hours before bedtime
- move dinnertime to four hours before bed
They also were taught how to use visualization to fall asleep quickly.
The result is - Migraine sufferers who slept well reduced their headache frequency by 29% and their headache intensity by 40% compared with those who didn't change their sleep habits (in the control group.)
As a sidenote, Dr. Calhoun was actually trying to prove that medication overuse as a factor in headaches becoming more chronic is less prevalent than lack or a poor quality of sleep.
Yours truly says that the neuroplasticity is a complicated issue and additional studies should be conducted. As in - please don't disregard medication overuse as being bad for you, my gentle readers. However, kudos to Dr. Calhoun for reminding us the importance of getting our Zzzs.
link: Improve Sleep Habits to Cut Migraines
0 comments:
Post a Comment