Migraine supplements: Omega-3s fight stress and improve sleep quality

If you have migraines, increasing your intake of omega-3s could help both decrease the frequency of attacks and reduce stress and improve sleep quality. How to take them? When diet is not enough, supplements come to the rescue.

A good dose of Omega-3s could help improve the lives of those battling migraines. Adding evidence to the already available data on the usefulness of these fats-common ingredients in many dietary supplements-is a study published in Fontiers in Pain Research by a team of researchers led by Keturah Faurot of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, US. 

According to data collected by Faurot and colleagues increasing Omega-3 intake can help improve sleep quality and reduce perceived pain for those living with this disorder, helping them feel healthier.

This information opens new perspectives in the management of a health problem that is as widespread as it is disabling. Suffice it to say that, according to statistics reported by the Italian Society of Neurology (Sin), migraine affects 32.9 percent of the female population and 13 percent of the male population. 

Migraine, a complex problem 

Migraine is a complex disorder associated with the malfunction of the mechanisms that control pain; this malfunction activates, in genetically predisposed individuals, the system formed by the trigeminal nerve and associated blood vessels (and whose functioning it controls). There are several types (without aura, with aura, chronic, probable) distinguishable on the basis of international classification criteria.

Pain may be associated with visual, sensory, and motor disturbances, nausea or vomiting, and quality of life may be greatly impaired by stress, insomnia, anxiety, or true headache-related depression.

Attacks can be managed with painkillers and antiemetics; there is also no shortage of pharmacological solutions prescribed to reduce their occurrence. Medications can improve the frequency or duration of attacks, but unfortunately there is no shortage of unwanted side effects. For this, and for all those cases in which there seems to be no effective way out of pain, the possibility of using other, perhaps nonpharmacological, approaches is highly desirable.

The potential of omega-3s against migraine headaches

Possible help could also come from diet; in particular, it might be useful to act on the type of fats taken in. From this point of view, theoretically it might be helpful to reduce omega-6 fats, whose properties promote the perception of pain, while increasing omega-3 fats might help counteract it. In fact, some derivatives of EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid)-the Omega-3s abundant in fish and marine-derived oils (from fish, cod liver, krill and microalgae)-have pain-relieving properties.

There is no shortage of scientific studies to support this hypothesis. In 2013, research published in the journal Pain revealed that increasing Omega-3 intake and reducing Omega-6 intake can decrease the frequency of attacks in chronic forms of headache. The effect was observed after 12 weeks; reducing Omega-6 alone did not achieve the same benefits, suggesting the crucial role of increasing Omega-3 intake.

Authors of a study published in The BMJ in 2021 also associated increased Omega 3 intake with reduced frequency of headache attacks, adding details:

• Omega-3s can also reduce the severity of migraine headaches;
• Combining Omega-3 increase with Omega-6 reduction can produce greater benefits;
• changing the intake of these fats causes blood levels of their derivatives involved in pain perception to vary.

Even more recently, Faurot and colleagues returned to the topic by involving 182 adults struggling with 5-20 migraine attacks per month in their experiments, dividing them into 3 groups:

• The first group was prescribed a diet high in Omega-3 and low in Omega-6;
• The second group followed a diet rich in Omega-3 with an average Omega 6 content;
• The third group served as a control and had to follow a diet with average levels of both Omega-3 and Omega 6.

Analyses conducted after 16 weeks associated both omega-3-rich diets with reductions in pain and its ability to interfere with daily life, but not only that. Improvements in perceived stress, sleep quality and perceived health were also found in both cases compared to what was reported by individuals in the control group.

These results, the researchers explain in their publication, "support our hypothesis that symptoms associated with migraine attacks may respond to changes in specific dietary fats" and "suggest that increasing dietary Omega-3s, either by reducing or not reducing Omega-6s, could be another, reasonable approach to reducing symptoms associated with migraine attacks."

How to increase Omega-3 intake

Omega-3s are polyunsaturated fats naturally found in fish and some plant foods, such as walnuts and flaxseeds. Only fish, however, contributes the biologically active Omega-3s from which the pain-fighting molecules (EPA and DHA) are derived; walnuts and flaxseeds contain, in fact, alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), a precursor to EPA and DHA that the human body does not know how to use efficiently. Therefore, the best strategy to increase Omega-3 intake is to eat more fish, particularly fatty varieties such as anchovies and sardines.

In cases where this approach is not possible, for example due to allergies or because you follow a vegan diet, supplements based on oils of marine origin, sources of EPA and DHA that meet the needs of those who cannot meet their Omega-3 requirements with food alone, come to the rescue. Discover their benefits by continuing to read the Omegor Blog!

Bibliographic references:

Faurot KR, Park J, Miller V, Honvoh G, Domeniciello A, Mann JD, Gaylord SA, Lynch CE, Palsson O, Ramsden CE, MacIntosh BA, Horowitz M, Zamora D. Dietary fatty acids improve perceived sleep quality, stress, and health in migraine: a secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial. Front Pain Res (Lausanne). 2023 Oct 25;4:1231054. doi: 10.3389/fpain.2023.1231054.

Italian Society of Neurology. Pathology sheets. Headaches. Last viewed 28/02/25