Self Help

If you begin or continue to experience migraines during pregnancy, what can you do about it? Do you have to suffer with no medication for nine long months? Or can you take the drugs that helped you through before you were expecting?

You should follow non medication strategies as the first line of defense and the least risky way to prevent and handle your migraines while you are pregnant. These include physical therapy, biofeedback, massage therapy, acupuncture, and relaxation. If you’ve never before considered such alternative treatments to manage pain, your incentive is great at this time to try out one or more of the following:

1. Physical therapy: A directed program incorporating massage, joint mobilization, and strengthening exercises directed at specific muscle groups for the relief of pain and spasm.

2. Biofeedback: A technique that many migraine sufferers find useful through which you learn to relax muscles using a machine that shows you a picture of your muscle tension.

3. Massage: A familiar, pleasurable, hands-on-your-body rub-down that stimulates circulation and relaxes the muscles.

4. Relaxation therapy: Self-guided techniques to bring about overall mind-body relaxation.

5. Acupuncture: The Chinese practice of inserting needles into various points in your body to stimulate the production of endorphins to relieve pain.

If you are unsure of alternative medicine and have tended to dismiss it as being out of the mainstream therapy, consider one major study where thirty pregnant women with headaches who were treated with either biofeedback, relaxation training, or physical therapy. These types of treatment benefited a whopping 80% of the women studied, who reported significant relief in their headache diaries. These same women were followed after delivery. Fully 67% of the women who had received these alternative treatments still had a significant decrease in their headaches for up to one year after giving birth.

Another non medication option: If you can get the approval from your physician, you might want to try magnesium supplementation for migraine prevention. Several studies have shown benefit for some migraine sufferers. Magnesium sulfate is also used to treat eclampsia, a complication of pregnancy that causes high blood pressure and kidney abnormalities and can cause seizures and other brain abnormalities. Magnesium supplements are probably safe in pregnancy, although the optimal dose for migraine prevention has not yet been established.