My friend Jack She suffers from the most terrible migraines, but she has an unusual solution. When her migraines start, she lies down and gently places a vibrator on the top of her forehead. She swears that it gives her instant pain relief.
Although unconventional, Jack’s idea has historical roots. In 1892, neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot observed that Parkinson’s patients showed improvements in their tremors after long carriage rides. He attributed it to rhythmic vibrations and designed a “quick-paced chair”—a vibrating chair that reproduced movement. His student, Georges Gilles de la Tourette, later expanded the technique To treat migraines using a vibrating helmet. Both therapies provided “A powerful sedative for the nervous system“, wrote Charcot.
Although these early inventions fell into disuse, recent studies are revisiting the potential of vibration therapy for treating migraines and are beginning to reveal why vibration could be the breakthrough migraine sufferers have been looking for. “Some of the people who are using vibration as a migraine therapy are experiencing huge benefits – it’s very exciting to see,” says Tie-Quang Li of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, who has researched the effects of vibration on migraines.
Despite the migraines It affects an estimated one billion people worldwide.We know very little about how they occur or how to treat them. Migraines typically begin with an aura (visual disturbances such as flashing lights or bright spots) followed by pain, blurred vision, nausea, and sensitivity to light.
Although the exact causes of migraine remain unclear, attention has shifted from early theories that blamed dilated blood vessels to the role of the hypothalamus, a brain structure that is involved with pain messages, and inflammation of the meninges, the three layers of tissue that protect the brain and spinal cord. Current migraine medications either constrict blood vessels or block receptors in the pain network, but they don’t work for everyone and can cause side effects.
This has led many to explore alternative remedies, such as vibration therapy. Online forums are filled with anecdotes similar to Jack’s. “I massaged my neck with a vibrator and it completely eliminated the migraine pain I had suffered from for years,” wrote one Reddit user.
Although some research argues that vibration simply distracts from pain, recent evidence suggests there is more to it. In the first trial of its kind, Jan-Erik Juto and Rolf Hallin of the Karolinska Institutet inserted a catheter with a vibrating balloon into the nostril of migraine sufferers at the start of an attack. The volunteers recorded their migraine pain before, during and after the 15-minute treatment.
He A small pilot study showed promising results:17 of 18 people reported pain relief of at least 50 percent, compared with three of 17 people who received a placebo treatment. In addition, half of the people who received the treatment were completely pain-free 15 minutes after finishing it, compared with only two in the placebo group.
In the paper, Juto and Hallin speculate that the nasal vibration targets a set of nerve cells called the sphenopalatine ganglion, or SPG. Located just beneath the nasal membrane, the SPG is connected to the hypothalamus. During a migraine attack, the hypothalamus is thought to lose control on a set of brain structures called the limbic system, which affect how a person responds to pain. By stimulating the SPG and indirectly the hypothalamus, vibration can help restore control.
