If you experience headaches, you're among the 18 percent of women and six percent of men who experience them routinely, according to the U.S. Headache Consortium.
Healers have been trying to understand the cause of headaches and bring relief to those who have headaches for thousands of years. Some herbal headache remedies discovered centuries ago are still in use today. However, no company has sought FDA approval for a natural herb to treat headaches. With some notable exceptions, herbs for headaches have not been scientifically tested in large, well-designed clinical trials.
Willow Bark
Willow bark, Salix alba, sometimes called the natural aspirin, has been used for headache relief for more than 2,000 years by Native Americans, Europeans and Chinese. Alternative names for willow bark are Salix nigra, European willow, liu-zhi, crack willow, purple willow, pussy willow, weeping willow and white willow.
If you had a headache and access to a healer back in 400 B.C., you might have been advised to chew on willow bark. The bark of white willow contains salicin, a chemical similar to acetylsalicylic acid -- aspirin -- and is believed to be responsible for the herb's pain-relieving and anti-inflammatory qualities. The aspirin we know today is also derived from the white willow tree. The University of Maryland Medical Center notes that it takes longer for white willow to bring relief than aspirin but that its pain killing effects last longer.
Butterbur
Also known as wild rhubarb and the umbrella plant, butterbur -- petasites hybridus -- has been used as a traditional migraine preventative for about 500 years. While researchers are not certain how it works, it's believed that butterbur reduces the inflammation and enlarged blood vessels that lead to headaches.
A study by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York found that an extract from the butterbur root was effective in reducing the frequency of migraines by nearly one-half. The researchers tested the extract on 245 volunteers with migraine. A 75 mg butterbur extract dose reduced headache frequency by 48 percent in more than two-thirds of the patients compared with a 26 percent reduction among placebo users, according to study author Richard B. Lipton, professor of neurology at Albert Einstein. A 50-mg dose of the extract had no noticeable effect.
The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, has targeted butterbur as one of a select group of natural herbs deserving further clinical study.
Cautions
About 10 percent of the volunteers who took part in a study to evaluate the effectiveness of butterbur in preventing migraine experienced burping and other mild gastrointestinal discomfort.
The University of Maryland Medical Center says large-scale clinical trials are needed to prove the safety and effectiveness of willow bark in treating headaches. People who are allergic to aspirin should also avoid willow bark. Willow bark can also be harmful to people taking prescription medication for blood clots, diabetes, stomach ulcers, asthma, gout, gastritis, and hemophilia.
Opinions on the value and risk of medicinal herbs vary widely in the medical community.
References
- Neurology: Practice parameter: Evidence-based guidelines for migraine headache
- University of Maryland Medical Center: Willow bark
- Neurology: Petasites hybridus root (butterbur) is an effective preventive treatment for migraine
- National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine: NCCAM High Priority Topics for Preliminary Clinical Studies for Large Interventional Trials of CAM (R34) PAR-10-163
- MayoClinic.com: Heart disease
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