Why Botox Can Help Migraine Sufferers

by Amber Kahwaji

Migraines are quite literally a pain in the neck. But it’s not just your neck that might throb during a migraine episode.

Your head begins to pound, almost as though someone is beating you with a hammer, and the pain feels like your head it about to slip in half.

From there sensitivity to light begins to kick in, and you find it unbearable to even look at anything other than a really dark room.

The last moments include nausea, vomiting, and even body numbness before you go to sleep to try and diminish the pain.

For those who suffer from migraines, they are debilitating and truly take away all ability to carry on as though it’s a normal day. And for most, there were only a handful of treatments including massages, acupuncture, and really expensive prescription drugs.

But even medications only helped maintain the severity of a migraine, taking it from a head-splitting episode to a really bad headache.

Plus, you have to take the medication at the very first sign of a migraine otherwise they won’t work. But now there are a few methods on the market, some old and some new, that are helping migraine sufferers take control of their migraines.

The FDA recently approved a new drug called Aimovig, a once a month self injection that stops migraines before they even start. Hopefully health insurance will help cover some of the cost, because the price for the new drug costs $575 a month.

The other option is to try Botox. Also FDA approved, Botox is injected in 31 nerve-dense areas on and around the head every 12 weeks. Insurance will also cover the cost of the injections after oral medication has been tried but met with no relief.

Botox is a botulinum toxin type A, meaning it paralysis the muscles upon injection. It usually takes a week to kick in, and when treating migraines, Botox essentially blocks pain transmitters from activating pain in the brain when injected at the nerve sites.

Chronic migraine sufferers are those who suffer from 15 or more headaches a month, eight of those being migraines. But even having three migraines a month is three too many.