Psychosomatic self regulation of migraine headaches

Abstract

Most migraine patients, aided by Autogenic Feedback Training, learn to voluntarily regulate their headaches; patients develop psychosomatic self regulation of migraine headache by voluntarily relaxing the sympathetic section of the autonomic nervous system in the hand, thereby increasing the blood flow to that area; the degree of improvement varies across migraine patients, as some patients' improvement is better than others; there seems to be a hierarchy of behaviors through which the migraine patients progress toward regulating their headaches; and during training sessions in the clinic, it has been observed that significant increases occur in hand skin temperatures, while only small changes occur in frontotemporal skin temperatures.