CAN THIS REALLY HELP ABORT A MIGRAINE?
As I’ve mentioned many times in the past, the goal in a patient that is experiencing migraines is to improve their physiology so the brain is not so upset and the migraines can go away. In almost all cases, this is possible. It’s not usually addressed in this fashion, but it is possible for this type of outcome if the patient is willing to make changes and the physician is more concerned about what is causing the migraines then figuring out what medications will control the headaches.
However, until the changes that need to be made are identified and implemented, it should is nice to have something that can help control the attacks. Feverfew is an herb that has a long history of safe and efficacious use for reducing the number of migraine attacks. To my knowledge, though, I don’t ever remember coming across feverfew being used to abort a migraine that has started.
This particular study looked at the ability of a product called Lipigesic that contains both ginger and hoemopathic doses of feverfew in a rapidly deployable sublingual form. The results were a little surprising. Within 2 hours, 62% of those taking the Lipigesic had pain reduction while placebo still had a solid 39%. These are pretty good numbers on either treatment arms. Compared with the side effects of using drugs like Imitrex, this could be an excellent tool until the lifestyle changes begin to work.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1526-4610.2011.01910.x/abstract