Deep breathing?

I wonder if anyone tried this. I've recently noticed that my general breath cycle is slow, irregular and not very deep so I did a bit of searching and it seems like breath disorders can indeed trigger headaches. At the same time, deep breathing is said to alleviate at least stress related migraines. Any thoughs or personal experience?

So far I cannot really say if it helps since I've only been trying it for 2 days and a half and absebse of headache could be just a normal interval between migraines.

I've often wondered this also. I try to do deep breathing but then go right back to my old irregular self. It does make sense to me that breathing right could help.

Yes, I was told by my physio that I was not breathing properly and it had an effect on my headaches.
I started noticing my breathing and realizied I don't breathe correctly when I'm about to get a migraine and also at night. Since then I've been trying to correct my bad habits. I'll see if I can find a link on the net.

I find if I concentrate and breath deeply and "normally", I almost fall asleep.

I learned diaphragmatic breathing years ago and thought it would help.
But when I learned a bit of yoga i was told that i needed to make sure my chest moved as well.
I cant argue that it wasn't strange after years of breathing from the diaphragm.

What kind of breathing are you trying please?

P

I don't feel right breathing unless is is in my chest. It feels more like the oxygen goes to your head that way.

What kind of breathing are you trying please?

Well, so far I'm just tyring to break the cycle by deep, forceful breathing that involves the chest and opens nasal channels as much as possible. I do this from time to time for maybe 1-2 minutes. This is not a method I read anywhere - juts my guess that messing with typical breath cycle a bit might help. If it helps, I'll write here

One thing I noticed - these deep breaths seem to invlove the very regions behind the eyes and adjacent to the nose that the headache typically starts from. Involved as in - by breathing I can actually feel the surface of these regions, this does make me optimistic somewhat since thats the first time I feel anything there when I don't have the headache

try googling "mouth breathing" which is what my physio says I do and should not be doing, and "abdominal breathing", which is what I should learn to do.

I use a respirate machine once a day in the morning to slow my breathing. I breathe in through my nose and breath out through my mouth: from my stomach, not my chest.

It calms me down.

Martin

I used to mouth-breathe when I was a kid, but I think I started breathing normally at around 15 or 17... So at least just this does not cure anything I dunno if relative weakening of my migraines at around the same period is thanks to this though, never came to my mind before.

I think that deep breathing can help make a migraine attack less intense. That is why meditation is so good for you!
I had a terrible migraine yesterday during an mri... concentrating on my breathing is the only way I made it through!

A little update :

Weird it may be but it seems to work so far. My random guess is that the pressure of the air current passing through the nasal passages enlarges them to the point that their walls start to press on the areas in the inner skull unaccessible to normal methods. The idea is to breath strongly and forcefully and try to direct the current through the upper-back passages so that they are pushed back as far as possible.

The results :

Last saturday:
awoke with slight pain, started doing this. For 30 minutes it intensified, then vanished to 1.5-0.5 and decayed further to almost zero during the day. (usually they stay at 5-6 for hours)

This tuesday:
Felt one coming behind the eye. After doing the breathing thing the area it started from could be felt much more clearly than usually, but the feeling was nothing like the pain. Just felt weird and tingled a bit.

Today: pretty much like tuesday.

I can be still be imagining things but this just *might* be my method to get rid of the damn headaches:)


P.S. No headache medications for 1.5 weeks atm.

Zekses - very interesting. I will try it. I like common sense stuff and I think you may be on to something. Keep us posted.

The guy who taught me yoga breathing told me:
Breath into your chest, allow it to inflate.
Then exhale from the diaphragm/belly, pull it gently in.

This should all be very gentle.
Deep breathing is deep within, not hard, or you hyperventilate.

He said not inflating the chest at all is bad for my neck.....

The idea is that the topic can be renamed by now I think I suspect that it's not so much breathing but a weird method to massage the areas inside the brain

Pen - this makes sense to relax but that other method makes more sense to me to
abort a migraine. I'm trying it anyway.

Me too Linda. I will try anything within reason....

I think Zekses is onto something.
Sleep apnea will often be the beginning of a migraine for me. Sometimes just one little snort or snore is enough to cause pain and the beginning of a migraine. My room is ventilated to try and keep this from happening, but I want to try an APAP machine at some point. When my nasal passages get inflamed, whether it is from a virus, or allergies or sleep apnea (snoring) I am more prone to migraines.

Heh, when I have a flu or cold its headache non-stop for days.

By the way, I am similar to lentis somewhat, the easiest way to trigger an attack is probably to lose to sleepiness and snooze for 15 minutes during the day or even enter the "near sleep" state without actually falling asleep. It could be that its because of the breath mode at that moment, yeah.

I use Migranol nasal spray and inhale it deeply. I'm wondering if the breathing is why it works so well for me (or wouldn't that be something if it was just the breathing and not the spray that worked?). I will be trying it.

I have read that some people have gotten relief from a migraine by breathing off an oxygen bottle for about 15 minutes. So that would indicate there may be something to the idea of deep breathing that may help abort or prevent a migraine from coming on. I've never tried it myself, not having easy access to O2, but it sounds intriguing . I'd certainly rather get oxygen than take medications with all the extra potential problems that seem to go with them.

OK. I tried it. Last night I had the "feeling" that I could wake up with a migraine so I did what you said. I didn't get a migraine but
still felt the "feeling" this morning. Did some more breathing. No migraine. I''m not getting my hopes up. It would just be way too simple. Wouldn't that be something though if that is all it took and we are shoving all these medicatonns in our bodies?

Migrainegirl - I knew someone that had oxygen near by for when he got a migraine and it worked. They hook you up to it right away in the ER also. I'm going to try a lot more deep breathing. It has to be good for you anyway.

estre,post here if it helps. Would be nice to know that I'm not imagining things for once
I'm seriosly tired of dismissing "stuff that works" because it worked for month or two only or just was a coincidence >_<

Oxygen is used here for cluster headaches, but not migraines.
Not sure of the reason for that....

So help my bewildered pained and drugged brain guys.
Exactly what breathing are we doing....Linda????

P