If we’re friends on Facebook, you know that I shared an article about the piercing that supposedly helps to quell migraines. If we aren’t friends on Facebook, chances are you know someone that has considered going through this. I’ve been frequently thinking about this, and so I figured I would add my two cents in the debate on whether or not getting your daith pierced is a viable option for chronic migraine sufferers.
I want to start off with my personal story. I began getting migraines when I was in seventh grade, at first they weren’t too severe, but by the following year, they were debilitating and I found myself missing three or four days of school per week. I was even ending up in the hospital on rare occasions. This continued throughout my high school career, with the exception of eight blissful months my junior year when the migraines mysteriously disappeared. During that time, I tried everything from acupuncture, to seeing multiple chiropractors and most recently receiving Botox injections as well as nerve blocks to help prevent them from coming so frequently. At the end of my freshman year of college, I was getting migraines every three days, for a length of around 24 hours. At that time, my mom was completing extensive research on a piercing that could possibly help reduce the number of migraines that I got every month. The daith is a pressure point in a person’s inner ear, as shown below. I’ll mention this now before I go any further, this doesn’t do the trick for every person that gets it done, some swear by it, others hate it and take it out. BUT, the week before I got mine done, I was in the hospital with a migraine, my nurse on call had a daughter that suffered more than I did with migraines, and after getting the piercing, her migraines stopped. It was that story that helped me to make my decision to get it done.
The day I got my piercing done, I actually had a doctor’s appointment earlier that day. By no surprise, I woke up with a migraine the morning of. I remember sitting in my mom’s car and her asking me (as I was half asleep) if I wanted to get the procedure done and over with, because what did I have to lose? I agreed, probably not realizing what I said, and that was how we ended up at a tattoo shop in my hometown late in the afternoon. Steve, the guy who did my piercing, assured me he would make it as quick and painless as humanly possible, and that he did. I will also warn you that once your adrenaline wears off, you’re going to feel sick to your stomach, so bring water and something sweet to have after the earring is in.
I went about a week without any symptoms of a migraine, I was convinced that this was going to be the “be all, end all” for things I had to try. But alas, a migraine came back, but this time, it was less time and I found myself having to take less medication for the pain, and that is a victory I will take any day of the week. I sit and laugh now because at first, it was done for medical purposes, and now I have it for vanity reasons as well.
I’ll leave you with this perspective, the pain you feel for the split few seconds after the initial needle, earring going in, and not being able to sleep on that specific side in bed for a few weeks, by far outweighs the intense and often intense pain of a migraine.