Acupuncture for migraines & headaches
Acupuncture is one of the most-studied tools for migraine, reducing how often attacks come and how hard they hit, without daily medication.
Headaches have many forms, tension headaches from tight neck and scalp muscles, migraines with their throbbing and sensitivity, and hormonal headaches tied to the cycle. Each has a different driver.
Acupuncture is well supported for headache and migraine, both for easing an attack and, over a course of visits, for making them come less often. We treat you based on the pattern your headaches actually follow.
Symptoms we treat
If any of these sound like your experience, acupuncture is worth a conversation. This isn't a diagnosis, your first visit is.
Why acupuncture works here
It works on three levels at once, local, segmental, and central. We pick the points to match what your headaches are doing.
From first visit to plan
The same four steps for everyone, at an unhurried pace. Your first visit includes a consultation.
The clinical picture
Headaches are a common symptom in everyday life, but their causes are diverse and cannot be generalized. The sensitivity to pain and tolerance can vary greatly between individuals, and psychological factors also play a significant role, making the condition complex. Modern medicine classifies the mechanisms of migraines and other types of headaches as follows:
- Dilation of intracranial arteries: a primary cause of migraines
- Traction of intracranial tissues: associated with brain tumors, brain hemorrhage, post-cerebrospinal fluid extraction
- Dilation and traction of intracranial blood vessels: seen in cases of fever, hypertension, cerebral aneurysm, cerebrovascular malformation, oxygen deficiency, and intoxication
- Inflammation and irritation of cranial tissues: such as meningitis, subarachnoid hemorrhage
- Contraction of head and neck skeletal muscles: commonly known as tension-type headaches
- Referred pain from stimulation in specific areas: including glaucoma, refractive errors, and inflammations of the ear, nose, or mouth
In contrast, traditional Korean medicine categorizes headache causes into internal factors, external factors, and other causes. For example, headaches accompanied by a cold are considered external headaches, while those caused primarily by internal factors include hypertension or tension headaches. Headaches resulting from trauma fall into neither internal nor external categories. Traditional Korean medicine further classifies headaches based on their symptoms as follows:
- Wind-type headache: dizziness, fever, sweating, muscle cramps, aversion to wind, floating pulse
- Heat-type headache: fever, excessive sweating, thirst, chest discomfort, facial flushing, red eyes, preference for cold and aversion to heat, dark urine, constipation, strong and rapid pulse
- Damp-type headache: feeling of heaviness in the head, worsens in humid or cloudy weather
- Cold-type headache: headache extending to the teeth, chills, cold extremities
- Qi deficiency headache: more severe in the morning and alleviated in the evening, worsens with fatigue, general weakness, shortness of breath, loss of appetite
- Blood deficiency headache: persistent but not intense, worsens in the afternoon or evening, pale complexion and lips, general weakness, feeling of warmth in the palms and soles
- Phlegm-type headache: feeling as if something is covering the head, dizziness, nausea, restlessness, heavy body, excessive phlegm
- Emotional headache: mostly due to liver dysfunction, worsens with stress
- Food retention headache: caused by indigestion, accompanied by bloating, belching, and acid reflux
Traditional Korean medicine diagnoses headaches using these classifications and treats them accordingly with acupuncture and herbal medicine.
頭 head
Read du in Korean. Hanja are learned meaning first, then sound, so this one is 머리 두.