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Intensive Mindfulness Meditation Reduces Frequency and Burden of Migraine: An Unblinded Single-Arm Trial

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Abstract

Objectives

Preventing migraine headaches and improving the quality of life for patients with migraine remains a challenge. We hypothesized intensive meditation training would reduce the disease burden of migraine.

Method

An unblinded trial was analyzed as a single cohort exposed to a silent 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat that included 100 hr of sitting meditation. Participants with chronic or episodic migraine were enrolled and followed for 1 year. The primary outcome was a change in mean monthly migraine days at 12 months from baseline. Secondary outcomes included headache frequency and intensity, acute medication use, work days missed, home meditation, sleep quality, general health, quality of life, migraine impact, positive and negative affect, perceived stress, mindfulness, and pain catastrophizing.

Results

Three hundred people were screened and 58 (19%) agreed to participate and enrolled in the intensive meditation training. Forty-six participants with chronic migraine (≥ 15 headaches/month of which ≥ 8 were migraines) and 12 with episodic migraine (< 15 and ≥ 4 migraines/month) attended and 45 (78%) completed the retreat. At 12 months, the average migraine frequency was reduced by 2.7 days (from 16.6 at baseline) per 28 days (95%CI − 4.3, − 1.3) and headaches by 3.4 (20.1 at baseline) per 28 days (− 4.9, − 1.9). Fifty percent responder rate was 29% for migraine. Acute medication use dropped by an average of 2.2 days (− 3.9, − 0.5) per 28 days, and participants reported 2.3 fewer days (− 4.0, − 0.5) on which they reduced their activity due to migraines. The most striking and promising effects were in several secondary outcomes, including migraine-specific quality of life, pain catastrophizing, and perceived stress. The significant improvements observed immediately following the intervention were sustained at 12 months follow-up.

Conclusions

Training in Vipassana meditation via a 10-day retreat may reduce the frequency and burden of migraine.

Preregistration

ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT00663585.

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Data Availability

The dataset analyzed in his article is not publicly available.

References

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Funding

This publication was made possible by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) which is funded in part by Grant Number UL1 TR003098 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It was also supported through the Society of General Internal Medicine Founders Award grant, a KL2 grant (NIH 1KL2RR025006-01), and a T32 grant (NIH/ NHLBI 5 T32 HL007180).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

Madhav Goyal: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, resources, data curation, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, visualization, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition. Jennifer Haythornthwaite: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, resources, data curation, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, visualization, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition. Sharat Jain: conceptualization, methodology, resources, writing—review and editing, supervision. Lee Peterlin: Methodology, investigation, writing—review and editing. Megha Mehrotra: formal analysis, data curation, writing—review and editing. David Levine: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, writing—review and editing, supervision, funding acquisition. Jason Rosenberg: conceptualization, methodology, resources, writing—review and editing. Mary Minges: investigation, data curation, writing—review and editing. David Seminowicz: methodology, resources, writing—review and editing. Daniel Ford: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, resources, data curation, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, visualization, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Madhav Goyal.

Ethics declarations

Ethics Statement

The study was approved by the Johns Hopkins Institutional Review Board (IRB # NA_00016428).

Informed Consent

Written informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

Conflict of Interest

BLP is a speaker for Allergan, Amgen, Novartis, Lundbeck, and Biohaven Pharmaceuticals and an editor for a headache journal. DAS is an advisor to Empower Therapeutics. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

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Goyal, M., Haythornthwaite, J.A., Jain, S. et al. Intensive Mindfulness Meditation Reduces Frequency and Burden of Migraine: An Unblinded Single-Arm Trial. Mindfulness 14, 406–417 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-023-02073-z

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