Intensive running completely removes a migraine attack
Medical Hypotheses 72 (2009) 608–617
A long time observation on a single patient shows, that a fast intensive running (of 2–3 km) can immediately and completely remove an acute migraine attack. We do not mean the daily jogging
or sport as a preventive maintenance, but propose a new and direct treatment of headache: when the patient experiences a headache, fast, intensive running can completely eliminate it, up to the next attack that happened approximately in a week. This statement contradicts the traditional point of view, that in case of a migraine attack, the patient needs a rest. Of course, the proposed treatment of running is applicable only to those people for whom running poses no danger to their health.
This finding suggests a simple macro-mechanism for the direct effects of running on the migraine. The migraine is a vascular disease [1], and intensive running acts on the blood vessels and thus eliminates the pain. On the micro-level, this observation might be connected to the human hormonal system since the migraine itself is connected to the hormonal system [1]. If one eliminates the trigger factors (such as emotional stress, changes in sleep patterns, skipping meals, etc.), the migraine attack appears quite regular. Therefore, the migraine is probably connected to the internal human biological clock (that should manifest itself, e.g., as cyclic
oscillations of concentration of certain hormones in the human blood). The migraine attack begins, probably, when concentration of certain hormones passes through their minimal (or a maximal) level. The running (that is a strong hormonal stress for a human organism) can lead to increase (or decrease) of this level and therefore, to the elimination of the pain.
In summary, we have found that in case of a migraine attack a 2–3 km of running eliminates the headache completely. It is surprising that, in spite of the humanity suffers from the migraine
over thousands of years, such a simple observation, as far as we know, has never been reported. It would be interesting to test this finding on a group of patients suffering from migraine.
Reference [1] Goadsby PJ et al. Migraine – current understanding and treatment. New Engl J
Med 2002;346:257–70.
Yakov M. Strelniker
Department of Physics,
Bar-Ilan University,
52900 Ramat-Gan,
Israel
Tel.: +972 3 531 7880; fax: +972 3 738 4054
E-mail address: strelnik@mail.biu.ac.il
doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2009.01.004 |
