Vitamins & Nutritional Supplements for Headache

Compared with healthy people, people with migraines have been found to have lower blood and brain levels of magnesium. Preliminary research in a group of women (mostly premenopausal) showed that supplementing with magnesium (usually 200 mg per day) reduced the frequency of migraines in 80% of those treated. In a double-blind trial of 81 people with migraines, 600 mg of magnesium per day was significantly more effective than placebo at reducing the frequency of migraines. Another double-blind trial found that taking 360 mg of magnesium per day decreased the number of days on which premenstrual migraines occurred. One double-blind trial found no benefit from 486 mg of magnesium per day for three months. However, that study defined improvement according to extremely strict criteria, and even some known anti-migraine drugs have failed to show benefit when tested using those criteria. Intravenous magnesium has been reported to produce marked and sometimes complete symptom relief during acute migraines, usually within 15 minutes or less...