A type of movement therapy designed to promote relaxation may help chronic headache sufferers deal with their pain, preliminary research suggests.

The study of 33 adults with frequent tension-type headaches or migraine found that the therapy - known as the Trager approach - appeared to reduce bouts of head pain and help patients cut back on medication.

The Trager method, named for its founder, Dr. Milton Trager, is a mind-body type of movement therapy that aims to reduce the tension that people unconsciously hold in their bodies.

It involves massage-like sessions in which a practitioner certified in the technique gently moves and stretches the muscles and joints to try to relax the body. Patients are also taught sequences of movements to do at home.

The Trager approach is promoted for treating lower back pain and other musculoskeletal woes, but the new study is the first to evaluate its effectiveness against chronic headache.

The results suggest that the therapy can help relieve the pain of both common tension-type headaches and migraine, according to Dr. Stanley Azen, a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and the study’s senior author.

The findings, Azen said, lay the groundwork for larger studies that look at the longer-term effects of the Trager approach and how variable the benefits may be with different Trager practitioners - since a single practitioner performed the therapy in this study.

However, a chronic headache sufferer interested in seeking out a certified Trager therapist need not wait for those larger studies, according to Azen. Since the therapy is so low-risk, he told Reuters Health, it may be worth a try.

Azen and his colleagues report their findings in the journal Alternative Therapies.

The study included adults, mostly women, who had suffered tension-type headaches, migraine attacks or both at least once a week for more than six months.

The patients were randomly assigned either to six weeks of once-a-week Trager sessions, to an “attention” group that met weekly with their doctors to discuss their condition, or to a control group that received no additional therapy beyond medication.

By the end of the study, Trager patients were reporting fewer headaches per week - about 27 percent fewer, on average - along with a 44 percent reduction in medication use. Patients in the attention group also showed small declines in headache frequency and medication use, while headache frequency and intensity appeared to worsen in the control group.

According to the researchers, the Trager approach may help relieve pain through a general calming effect on the central nervous system. And although migraine and tension-type headaches are different conditions, the team notes that patients with either type of head pain may have similar “muscle tension patterns,” particularly in the neck and back, that may respond equally well to the Trager technique.

SOURCE: Alternative Therapies, September/October 2004.