A randomized, double-blind study which was published in the journal “Current Medical Research and Opinion”, has found that taking vitamin D3 supplements can significantly lower the number of migraine days experienced by migraine sufferers.
A randomized, double-blind study is a study involving human participants in which neither side (neither patients nor those administering treatment) knows who’s getting what treatment, and a placebo is given to a control group. This randomized, double-blind study involved 48 participants, of whom 36 were women and 12 were men and all of whom were between 18 and 65 years old. The participants were divided into two groups. One group received 100mg per day of vitamin D3 supplement, while the other group were given a placebo. The migraine attacks and symptoms which each participant experienced were assessed by self-reported diaries.
The study results showed that those who had received the vitamin D3 supplements had the number of headache days they experienced decrease from 6.14 ± 3.60 days, to 3.28 ±
3.24 days (the “±” symbol meaning here that these were the inclusive range of values, from the most number of headache days to the least, within the group at the start of the trial). For the placebo group this was 5.72 ± 4.52 days to 4.93 ± 3.24 days.
While the number of migraine days decreased, unfortunately the migraine severity and pressure pain thresholds didn’t show any significant change. There were however, no side-effects reported from taking the vitamin D3 supplement.
The next step is to implement larger scale studies to confirm if vitamin D3 could be a preventative treatment option for adult migraine sufferers.
Leave a Reply