Biofeedback
I was reading in the paper that, if you make your hand warm, your headache will get better. Does that actually work?
There have been some studies which suggest that, if you warm the hand opposite to the side the headache is, the headache will get better. With training, you can use biofeedback to raise the temperature of the hand and ease the headache symptoms, rather than putting your hand in hot water.
What is biofeedback, and can it help tension-type headache?
It is possible to measure the amount of spasm in your neck muscles using something called EMG – electromyography. Biofeedback is about making you aware of how tense your muscles are so that you can relax them. With this technique you learn to recognize how the muscles feel using a biofeedback machine and how to relax the muscles at will – thereby easing or preventing the tension-type headache. Eventually you will be able to achieve this relaxation without the machine.
Can biofeedback do something to stop my migraine happening?
Some studies have shown that a migraine sufferer can learn how to constrict their temporal artery, which becomes dilated at the start of the migraine attack. By constricting the artery, the attack can be aborted.
It is possible that using biofeedback to relax neck and shoulder muscles may help in raising your migraine threshold and thus prevent a migraine attack from being triggered. Biofeedback has the potential to help and will not cause any harm.
