To Daith or not to Daith

In recent years, there has been conversations over what is called a daith {deɪθ/ (rhymes with 'faith') or dʌθ/ (homophonous with 'doth') Definition link} piercing. What is a daith piercing? A daith is an ear piercing that passes through the ear's innermost cartilage fold. The piece of cartilage that starts in the center of your ear just above the ear canal which eventually ends up creating the upper rim of your ear. The place were the piercing is placed is an acupuncture or pressure point sight just above the ear canal. Per Dr. Cohn who has been sharing and working with Dr.Chris Blatchley of the London Migraine Clinic (which I mention later) it seems it is more vagaus nerve stimulus than a form of acupuncture.

As with anything there are always pros and cons. I personally believe before I jump off half cocked, I want to do my research to see if what I am reading is true or plausible. I always encourage others to do the same. As we all know not everything on the internet is not completely reliable either way. Like with anything of this nature there are a crazy amount of articles for and against. Those against usually say something about the piercing being a myth or that the person never really suffered from the problem in the first place. I know my truth, I have had migraines since I was 12 years old. When you blackout while riding your bike down the street, it's kind of hard to imagine that is something conjured in my mind and the pain is not real.

First of all, there are many different types of headaches and not all treatments work for each one. As far as I have researched and what I have found to be true in my case. Sinus, tension or cluster headaches do not seem to be affected by the piercing. Therefore, it is not a 100% cure all. To be perfectly clear despite a full lobotomy there is no full cure for headaches. If there is, no one has told me or I haven't found it. Most of of the jobs I have had over the years had been pretty accommodating when it came to me having to take time off when I would get a migraine so bad that I was bed ridden. However, my current job has not been so flexible in this area I was starting to get in trouble at work due to mistakes and missing work. With the exception of one medication, the drugs the doctors wanted to put me on, I could not function. I tried topomax (toprimate). While it works great for may people, I am not one of them. I am very lucky, I fell asleep while driving through an intersection. I could not control being conscious. I have tried fiornol, Imitrex and Maxalt to name a few. I had had the best results with the Maxalt, but I had to catch the migraine right as it started. The best part was it didn't make me stupid or make my head feel worse. I could still work. If I took it too late though, it didn't work at all. The worst of it all was that my doctors would ask me how many a month I had. Umm...they never went away. I always had some sort of pain in my head. I was informed that since there wasn't a quantifiable number that I wouldn't be eligible for disability or alternate types of help (that's how it was phrased to me, not that I understand what was meant by that.) That wasn't my goal. I just wanted relief. I was tired of being in constant pain.

In most articles you come across will mention just getting the piercing on the side that is most prone to having migraines. My were both side, simultaneously or would travel back and forth. I opted to have both sides I have 2 friends that had done the single side piercings. One of them her migraine didn't compare to mine she had maybe 1 or 2 a month. The other hers were (to me) worse than mine. She had a definite beginning and end to hers and she could be in bed for a week at a time. 3 days was the longest any of mine made me bed ridden. The both raved at how much of an improvement they had seen since their piercing. I went on to read several more articles and news stories about this procedure. I figured the pros out weighed the cons. If it worked I would save the money on prescriptions and be in less pain, if it didn't I had a new piercing.

When the first one was done. I felt a small relief of pressure. After the second one was finished, the room spun, I was very light-headed and almost passed out. Once I got my bearing back, I didn't have any pain. I was so light-headed from not having pain I really didn't know how to react. All of my friends that saw me afterwards were amazed at the change in my disposition. You could see a physical difference in my demeanor. I was kind of brooding (not easy to be happy and laughing when it makes your head hurt worse) to giddy and laughing a lot. This was in November 2016. I have had my piercings now for a year and half. I have had 2 (yes 2) migraines in the past year and a half. It was 9 months before I had a migraine. It's intensity was not even comparable to how it used to be. I still get tension headaches from time to time, but actual migraines, I have had a total of 4 since my piercings. Since this time I have had 3 more friends get piercings for their migraines, 2 of them went both sides like me and the 3rd one did just one side. All 3 had noticeable improvement. In fact, one of them has fibromyalgia. She said she noticed a major improvement in the all over chronic pain she was in. Most of it was gone. Yes some days the weather plays apart and she is sore, but it is so nice not to see her so fidgety from just trying to be comfortable.

So let's look at some of the facts, pros and cons from the professionals and various publications. First of all, finding an actual study done by medical professionals has been difficult. Currently the only actual survey/research is being done by Dr.Chris Blatchley of the London Migraine Clinic. I did come across an article published regarding a 54-year-old gentleman who had one side pierced and notice a significant decrease in his migraines. NCBI.NLM.NIH.GOV article

There are numerous neurologists and publications that are completely against daith piercings. Mostly stating there is not guaranteed results, or documentation, or proper studies done. That the the results of the piercings have a placebo effect. Meaning if you want something bad enough it will work regardless. However, a placebo effect does not last for years and I went in more doubting it would work than convinced it would work. So the placebo effect would not apply. When I had asked my neurologist about the piercings, he told me that it was a 'pipe dream' yet wanted me to go on a vitamin regimen that would have cost me more than $100/month on top of my regular medications. Again with no guarantees. Or possibly try Botox shots. Nope, sorry I know it may be safe, but if I started down that route I would end up with daily shots. I wanted off medicine not to put more drugs in my body.

If the piercing is not done correctly, you could end up with nerve damage. This could leave you with some slight numbness, even partial paralysis on the side of your face. So you do need to take a lot of consideration in who you have do the piercing. I does take a couple of months to heal properly and you do have to be diligent about following after care instructions. If the piercing is in the proper location it will go right through the pressure point. What I have found out is that this cold destroy the pressure point. However, I do know if you remove the piercing, it HURTS so I am more inclined to say it doesn't destroy it.

So many doctors do their due diligence on keeping up with 'trends'. If it's not in a medical journal it's not a viable option at least to many old-timers like my neurologist. He even admitted that he had no reason to look into this. So someone is guiding you into do doing or not doing something they themselves have not properly checked into. If this were to work, you wouldn't need them any more. Oops then they lost a patient which means they lost money and...probably the kick back they get from the pharmaceutical company for prescribing their medication of choice. As many may know here in the US we know there is no profit in fixing anything. So why create a cure? They would lose millions from their drugs no longer being needed. While some doctors will actually suggest/refer people to an acupuncturist. While this a good alternative method since they are trained, know exactly where the pressure points are and in many cases are certified. I would love that as an option. However, again it is a question of time and money. It's more expensive than a doctor's visit and then getting the time off of work to go. Then you still do know exactly how you are going to react each time. It should be the same each time, but they are human and as we know humans are never 100% accurate 100% of the the time.

Here are my piercings

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