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If you suffer from a migraine and are tired of popping pills, this news will be a ray of hope for you. It has recently been revealed that magnetic therapy -- the colloquial name for transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) -- may help ease the symptoms in some patients suffering from a migraine. Althouth the UK based NICE says that there is limited evindence to support this claim, the UK guidance said that even though this procedure is relatively new, it may be useful for those patients in whom other treatment modalities have failed.
A migraine is usually episodic (occurs anywhere from once or twice a year to 1-4 times a month) in nature and is accompanied with symptoms like vomiting, blurring of vision etc. In some patients the episodes may be very cose together and they may experience it very freaquently, almost every day. Though the exact causes of migraines are unknown, the physiology of the condition is well understood -- the blood vessel contractions and other changes in the brain as well as inherited abnormalities in 
certain areas of the brain have been linked to it. Read more about migraines.
The point of interest here is that TMS may be helpful to some, and trying it to beat excruciating pain might not be such a bad idea. TMS is a relatively nacent sicence that was first tried in 1985. It is based on the principle that our brain and its neurons can be hyperpolarised or depolarised using a magnetic induction to induce electric charges in the brain that ultimately help it to function better. The offshoot or progression of this thechnique is rTMS (repetitive Transranial Magnetic Stimulation). This sytem of therapy relies on the fact that magnetic fields pass easily through the skull and get converted to electrical charge and since a magnetic field only passes two inches into the brain, its effects can be easily controlled and modifeid. It is also a much more humane and safer than other conventional medical treatments like electroconvulsive therapy (shock therapy). Apart from TMS there are other ways to manage migraines.
Image source:www.brainclinics.com
With inputs from: ANI
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