Daith Piercings for migraine headaches have received an enormous coverage in social media since it was discovered, by chance, that they can prevent migraine attacks.
In spite of this no medical research has been done, something that Dr Blatchley has begun to correct.
His initial research involved in in-depth surveys online , and he has now completed two surveys of over 3000 people who have migraines and a daith piercing. Online surveys can only give an indication because the people who fill them in have self-selected. They are only a first step in a research process. However the consistency of the responses over many questions suggest a real effect that in NOT purely placebo. 70% of those who have had a Daith for over a year reported that their migraines are greatly improved or have stopped completely, and that the effects are long lasting (you can read the details of the first survey at london-migraine-clinic.co.uk ).
The most important conclusion from the surveys was that further research was both justified and needed. One of the initial discoveries from the surveys was that people were reporting an immediate change in headache, visual discomfort such as a dislike of bright light and patterns. They also reported an immediate reduction in ‘brain fog’, a fuzzy confusion that can be a very troubling symptom for many migraine sufferers. After the surveys, Dr Blatchley began to work with Professor Arnold Wilkins. Arnold is a specialist in visual systems in the brain, so they collaborated to use his techniques to measure both the immediate effects of piercing and the long-term follow-up to measure how long the effect lasted. They intend to publish their research shortly but in summary their research shows the following:-
- For reasons that are not yet understood it produces no effect on 20% of those treated
- 40% have a short-term effect that wears off after a relatively short period of a few weeks to month or two
- 40% have a marked long-term effect that endures for many months. It appears that this is a distinct and separate group
- As yet there is no way of knowing beforehand how a particular patient will respond. This is true for all the other medical treatments presently used for migraines. However further research will hopefully find a way of defining who is most likely to be helped.
The next stage of the research will be to use specialist brain scanning techniques to record how the piercing stimulates the brain to produce the immediate changes that people experience when they are treated with a piercing. This is very exciting since it will help show the medical profession how it works in a medical language they can accept!!
There is already a completely rational scientific explanation on how it works too. Daith Piercing stimulates the Vagus Nerve and Vagus Nerve Stimulation is already used to treat migraines and epilepsy.