A large study confirms that yoga helps migraines

If you’ve ever tried doing yoga as I have (I love hot yoga, but it’s not for everyone), you will not need convincing that it may very well help prevent migraine headaches along with giving you many other benefits.

A study just published by Indian researchers in the leading neurological journal, Neurology examined the effect of yoga as an add-on therapy to conventional medical treatment of migraine headaches. It was a “prospective, randomized, open-label superiority trial with blinded endpoint assessment carried out at a single tertiary care academic hospital in New Delhi”. 160 patients with episodic migraine were randomly assigned to medical and yoga groups. A total of 114 patients completed the trial. Compared to medical therapy, the yoga group showed a significant reduction in headache frequency, headache intensity, disability as measured by the headache impact test (HIT-6) and migraine disability assessment (MIDAS) scores, and in the number of pills taken.

The authors justifiably concluded that “Yoga as an add-on therapy in migraine is superior to medical therapy alone. It may be useful to integrate a cost-effective and safe intervention like yoga into the management of migraine.”

A word of caution though. Since migraine sufferers are more prone to a dissection of their neck arteries avoid extreme twisting of your neck. Forcing your neck into an extreme flexion or extension positions (which some teacher urge you to do) can also cause herniation of a disc in your spine. I’ve tried and have found standing on my head strangely pleasant, but this is dangerous. The bones in the cervical spine are very small and fragile and were not intended to carry the weight of our bodies. On the other hand, a proper headstand should not involve any pressure on your head – all of the weight must rest on the forearms. However, some people prone to migraines cannot tolerate any inversion poses where the head is lower than the heart