10 Effective Home Remedies for Treating a Migraine
Migraine can be miserably painful as it can last for hours. If you are suffering from a throbbing headache, and typing “migraine remedies” into Google to get a relief, you are not alone. This headache disorder is affecting one in seven people around the world. The good news is that you don’t have to suffer all the time. Here we’ve rounded up a solid list of home remedies for easing your migraine pain, so you can find instant relief at home in a pinch, without a trip to the doctor or taking medication. Try these simple tips and get to feel better.
1. Using a cold compress
Cold compress have been proven the most effective treatments for instant headache relieve, and used to treat headaches for more than one hundred years. According to researches, applying a cold compress from the outset of a migraine can reduce pain by about 30%. Try to put an ice pack on your forehead, scalp or neck to get pain relief. Leave it on for 15 minutes at a time and take a 15-minute break before reapplying.
2. Or a hot compress
Bringing heat to other parts of the body will stimulate blood flowing away from the head to the rest of the body, therefore ease some of the pain. You can try to put your feet in hot water or under a heating pad. A hot bath could also do the trick.
3. Drink some caffeine
Caffeine contained in the coffee and some other foods and drinks is proven effective to help relieve migraine. It can also make certain pain relief drugs more effective by helping your body absorb them faster. But as caffeine is easy to get dependent on, don’t drink too much, in case you have some withdrawal symptoms like more headaches.
4. Take some ginger
Ginger boasts so many health benefits that is taken as a common home remedy. It has been proven that ginger helps to make migraines shorter and less severe. In addition, ginger is helpful for reducing the side effects of your migraine medication had to your stomach.
5. Yoga
Practicing yoga is also a good cure for your migraine. Even some simple stretching can refreshes your brain with oxygenated blood, and the more blood and oxygen in your brain, the less painful your headache might be. It also trains you strength while relaxing tensions and muscles.
6. Meditation or resting
Research shows that lying down in a dark room for 15 minutes can effectively stop a headache or migraine. Meditation may inhibit the part of the nervous system responsible for stress, thus relieving migraines. Among all the relaxation practices, meditation are proven to be the most effective at alleviating migraines. Patients who did meditation often experiences positive changes in migraine-related anxiety and depression.
7. Sleep in a quiet, dark room
A bright lights can be more intended to trigger headache. And people with migraine can also be more sensitive to light. So make sure you are resting at a dark, quiet, comfortable room when a migraine occurs. Try use a blackout curtain. Emit the sources of lights from mobile phones, tablets, TVs, and other electronic devices before bedtime, and try not to use them while in bed.
8. Don’t oversleep
Though it sounds perfect to have an adequate sleep till afternoon on a Sunday, oversleeping could be detrimental to your health, especially if you suffer from a migraine. It could make you feel totally drained by throbbing headache. It is normally suggested that best to limit sleep time to nine hours.
9. Exercise regularly
Just as any doctor tells you, the more you exercise, the healthier you’ll get. Your body will release a chemical when practicing workouts called endorphins, which helps you reduce stress and fight pain. Make exercise a daily routine, if you suffer from severe migraine, try some mild exercises.
10. Eliminate the food triggers
Do you know that what you’re eating could also be the triggers of your headache? Try to figure out your own personal headache triggers and avoid them. You can track the foods and drinks you consume in a daily food headache diary. You may consider yourself to be sensitive to a certain food or drink if you get a headache consistently 20 minutes to 2 hours after eating that certain food. Some chemicals added in food such as nitrites are also known migraine triggers. So make sure you check the ingredients too.