SELF: Can a Daith Piercing Help Relieve Migraine Symptoms?
By Julia Ries
If you deal with migraine attacks and have struggled to find a treatment that actually works, you may have toyed with getting a daith piercing—a.k.a. the migraine piercing. Located on the middle ridge of cartilage within the ear—the external C-shaped part nearest to your ear canal—the daith piercing has become an increasingly popular way to seek migraine pain relief. On TikTok, videos touting the daith piercing’s alleged benefits have racked up hundreds of thousands of views, but whether the technique actually works is more controversial.
There isn’t much credible research on daith piercings and migraine. Though a few case studies1 have found that the piercing substantially improved some people’s migraine symptoms, much of the hype behind the trend is purely anecdotal. Some people claim it’s the only migraine treatment that has worked for them, but others say the piercing had no effect, caused an infection, or made their migraine episodes worse.
The daith piercing came about as an earring fad in the ’90s,2 but it wasn’t until around 2015 that speculation about the piercing’s ability to alleviate migraine pain started to pick up, Trevor Gerson, MD, a neurologist and headache specialist at Children’s Mercy in Kansas City, tells SELF. Around this time, Gerson says his headache clinic saw a spike in interest from migraine patients curious about daith piercings.
Read the full article via SELF