15% of French adults are affected by migraine attacks, which significantly impact quality of life.
More than one in ten adults in France are affected, and particularly women who are twice as affected. Migraines can be difficult to treat, and even more difficult to prevent. Fortunately, new methods are showing their effectiveness. Among them: auriculotherapy. This method, which consists of stimulating various points in the ear, is used against pain, anxiety disorders and even addictions. And according to several studies, auriculotherapy is also effective against migraine attacks, and in particular to prevent them.
A French study was recently carried out at the Foch hospital. Doctors are in fact faced with the “limits” of patient care: “unpleasant side effects, weariness with basic treatment, feeling of being drugged”… lists Dr. Michel-Cherqui in a press release. , pain specialist at Foch hospital and in charge of the study. His team therefore “oriented itself towards non-drug therapies”, such as auriculotherapy. Even if few studies have been carried out on the benefit of this method in the management of migraine, it is already “used in hospital pain consultations or in community medicine”, according to the press release from the Foch hospital.
To find out more about the effectiveness of this method, Dr. Michel-Cherqui and his team conducted a clinical trial with 90 patients. Half of them received 3 sessions of auriculotherapy spaced one month apart, and the other half did not benefit from it. This trial showed “encouraging results”, rejoice the French doctors. These auriculotherapy sessions have in fact allowed patients to “reduce the use of medications and improve their quality of life”. The patients who had the auriculotherapy sessions notably took less triptans (drugs widely prescribed against migraine attacks) than the others.
The advantage of this method compared to drug treatments usually prescribed is that there are very few side effects. The patients seem to be satisfied with it since in the context of the study carried out at the Foch hospital, “almost all the patients wanted to continue ear treatment on a regular basis at the end of the study”, rejoice the authors of the study. study whose results were published in the journal Frontiers in Neurology.
Auriculotherapy, if it proves its benefits in other studies carried out on migraine patients, could be particularly useful for people for whom treatments are not sufficiently effective or who suffer from adverse effects linked to medications. Currently, the prevention of migraines is mainly based on a healthy lifestyle, as well as taking basic medication treatments.