Acupuncture for Migraines on the Northern Beaches

We’ve been helping people with migraines here on the Northern Beaches for over 20 years.

Whether you’re:

• dealing with hormonal migraines with your cycle
• struggling to have regular exercise because it triggers a migraine
• wrestling with migraine food triggers while trying to live your life
• getting tension headaches that turn into migraines, or
• suffering with pain on a daily basis

… we understand and we’re here to help.

Acupuncture is one of the most effective natural migraine therapies and is frequently recommended in clinical guidelines and by Western medicine specialists.

As Chinese Medicine Practitioners, we use a completely distinct clinical framework for assessment and treatment – looking at nourishment, blockages and free flow of resources. We aim to bring deep healing so that your body is better nourished and can start to self-heal and self-regulate.

Let us show you how we can help.

Acupuncture for migraines – what does the research say?

There’s a good amount of high quality clinical research on acupuncture for migraine. The research suggests that acupuncture helps as both prevention and treatment for migraine and tension headaches.

The efficacy of migraine-prevention acupuncture is on par with preventative medications. This is very helpful for people who:

• want to reduce preventative medications due to side effects
• find that the medications don’t work, or have stopped working
• want to manage medication side effects with natural methods
• are looking for a realistic alternative to preventative medications

How many acupuncture sessions are needed for migraine treatment and prevention?

Research suggests acupuncture for headache and migraine works best as a planned course of treatment, often around 10 to 16 sessions over several weeks, rather than a single session. The exact number depends on the headache type and how long the symptoms have been going on.

People usually start with sessions once or twice a week, then space out treatments as the improvements start to take hold.

When the migraines have improved, then the next step is usually maintenance treatments every month or two to continue the benefits. Or people may stop once they feel satisfied with their results, with the option to return for a top-up course down the track as needed.

Acupuncture and Chinese medicine is always personalised to the individual, and the treatment changes as your body changes. Having regular sessions during the active treatment phase is like going to the gym – the repetition helps to “train” your body to operate in a new way. Our aim is to help these changes become your new normal.

What kinds of headaches and migraines are usually treated with acupuncture?

Acupuncture is very well known for treatment of chronic migraine, menstrual or hormonal migraine, migraine with aura, stress-linked migraine patterns, cervicogenic headache, and tension-type headache, with the best research evidence sitting in migraine prevention overall rather than in any one subtype.

For Chinese Medicine Practitioners, our categories tend to name the process that is calling for healing. For example, a “Liver Qi Stagnation” headache or migraine is one that is worse with stress and may also be included in menstrual migraines. A “Liver Yang Rising” headache or migraine may overlap more with vestibular migraine, with dizziness or vertigo (which can also often happen with Meniere’s disease).

Most of the time, there are mixed patterns happening in a person, and these patterns change over time as the treatment helps the body to become nourished and start to self-heal and self-regulate.

When we help blockages to shift and encourage tension to release, then nourishment can flow through the body and this replenishment changes the body conditions so that migraine is less likely to be triggered.

What to expect at our Northern Beaches clinic

Before you arrive for your first acupuncture session

When you book your first session, we’ll send you some information and ask you to fill in some forms. The health symptoms form is optional, but if you complete this form then we already have a great picture of what’s going on in your body systems.

Your initial appointment – the consultation

When you arrive at the clinic, we’ll welcome you into the treatment room and start off with a consultation. We’ll ask you to tell your story in your own words, however you’d like to talk about it. We may ask a few questions and learn more about your triggers. We may suggest some key things you can do at home to start seeing improvements right away – this is always tailored to what we’ve learned about you through the questionnaire and consultation. The suggestions could be tweaks to sleep routines, dietary suggestions or feeling more resourced with stress in your life. We aim to keep advice simple, logical and do-able.

Pulse diagnosis

The next step is pulse diagnosis, a key part of Chinese Medicine treatment. This “map” of sensations felt on the pulses at the wrist has been a central pillar of Chinese medicine practice for over two thousand years.

Acupuncture treatment

Combining the information from your questionnaire, our consultation and the pulse diagnosis, now we have everything we need to create an acupuncture treatment for you. We’ll explain the treatment to you and check that you’re feeling comfortable. If you’re unsure or nervous, there are plenty of things we can offer to help you relax, feel comfortable and in control of what’s happening every step of the way. Your comfort is very important to us. We want you to feel so relaxed that you drift off into a dream-like state during your session!

While we’re in the room with you, we may be using therapies like cupping, gua sha and moxa alongside acupuncture treatment. Everything is personalised to what your system needs on the day. (If you’re in an active episode then we can make special adjustments to light, temperature and sound, so that you can rest.)

Then it’s time to relax. There will be soft music playing, you’ll be warm and comfortable with pillows, towels and heat lamps arranged for your comfort. Your acupuncturist will leave the room and you will most likely drift off into a very pleasant dream-like drifting state. This represents a deep shift of your autonomic nervous system where the body activates its self-healing programs.

Your acupuncturist will choose points and channels that personalise the treatment to your body in that moment, and address the symptoms that you want to work on.

After your session

You’ll be invited to come “back to Earth” slowly! You’ll probably be feeling very calm and relaxed. We’ll book in your next session (or package) and we might send you some information to help you get the most out of your course of treatments, such as:

• Chinese herbal medicine – often a very efficient way to dramatically improve the healing process. There are many forms of herbal medicines and the prescriptions are tailored to you, and change over time.
• Supplements – we may suggest a small number of targeted, evidence-based supplements. This may include suggestions to help your body to easily absorb and digest them.
• Dietary medicine – using specific foods and cooking methods to support your body’s healing process. We tend to combine contemporary nutritional knowledge with ancient Chinese dietary principles – for the best of both worlds.
• Lifestyle medicine – practices that are tailored to you, that will support your body to better heal itself. We combine contemporary knowledge in areas such as inflammation and neuroscience, alongside traditional Chinese and cross-cultural practices. Some of these, such as specific kinds of meditation and yoga, are traditional practices that also have contemporary research evidence.

Getting to the clinic

We welcome patients from across the Northern Beaches and surrounding areas. If you come by car, there is plenty of free parking right outside the clinic. We’re located on the ground floor for easy access.

If you’re travelling by public transport, the 167 bus runs from Manly through Queenscliff and Freshwater to Curl Curl, through to Warringah Mall, Brookvale. The 166 bus runs from Manly through Queenscliff and Freshwater to Curl Curl, through to Dee Why, Narraweena, Beacon Hill and Frenchs Forest. Peak hour buses also connect Curl Curl to the City via Manly Vale, Balgowlah and the Mosman area. If you’re travelling from other areas such as Collaroy, Narrabeen or Seaforth, you can go to Warringah Mall and change to the 167 route.

Ready to get started?

We’d love to help you get started with your healing.

Click this button to book online, fill in a booking request form or ask us a question:

Dr Lois Nethery (TCM) is a highly recommended AHPRA-registered Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) with 20+ years of experience with migraine and headache natural treatment. She has created a unique migraine framework that addresses body, mind and spirit. Her system includes a range of effective and evidence-based complementary therapies such as acupuncture, gua sha, cupping, moxibustion, acupressure, dietary therapy, lifestyle therapy, meditation, EFT (tapping), light therapy, sound therapy and breath medicine. These are combined into a comprehensive system to address the sensitive nervous systems of people with migraine and chronic headaches.