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Your skull feels like it’s cracking open. There’s a blazing fireball in one corner of your brain. You just want to go lie down in a dark room for a few hours. You’re experiencing a migraine headache. And if you’re one of the unlucky people who suffer from “transformed migraine,” this is all going to happen again — probably tomorrow.
But there is some good news: The way you sleep might help.
A study led by Carolina neurologist Anne Calhoun found that transformed migraine sufferers who improved their sleep behaviors experienced a significant reduction in headache frequency and intensity. Previous studies had shown that transformed migraine sufferers almost always sleep poorly. But no study had ever determined whether sufferers might be able to reduce their headache symptoms by changing the way they slept.
Calhoun and the study’s co-author, Sutapa Ford, recruited 43 women who were undergoing treatment for transformed migraine. They gave 23 of the women the following sleep behavior instructions: Go to bed at the same time every night, and allow for eight hours of sleep. Don’t read, listen to music or watch television while in bed. Don’t take naps. Eat dinner at least four hours before bedtime, and limit the amount of fluids you drink for two hours before bedtime. Use visualization techniques — imagine, for example, that you are filming a silent movie at the beach — to help yourself fall asleep.
The researchers gave the remaining women, who made up the control group, a different set of instructions that weren’t meant to have any effect on their migraines — for example, eat dinner at the same time every night.
After 12 weeks, the women who modified their sleep behaviors reported a 29-percent reduction in headache frequency and a 40-percent reduction in headache intensity. They were also less likely to experience regular, day-to-day transformed migraines: Many of them went back to having only occasional migraines.
The control group experienced no improvement until they began following the same set of instructions as the test group. By the end of the study, almost 44 percent of the women had reverted from transformed migraine to episodic migraine.
Calhoun said that researchers have known about the association between headaches and poor sleep for at least 125 years. Other types of headache, she said, are related to sleep stages, and certain sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea may contribute to chronic daily headache.
“Transformed migraine is the most common form of chronic daily headache, and is the most common reason that patients seek treatment at headache clinics,” Calhoun said. “Behavioral sleep modification appears to be an effective treatment for transformed migraine when coupled with standard medical care.”
Calhoun is a clinical associate professor in the School of Medicine’s department of neurology. Ford is a clinical neuropsychologist at Carolina. The National Headache Foundation provided financial support for the study.
Provided by Research and Economic Development.
Editor: Neil Caudle
Writer: Jason Smith