A Different Way to Stop Migraines: Brushing Your Teeth with Salt Water

If you have ever had a real migraine, you know that this is not simply a “bad headache.”

A migraine can mean pounding or throbbing pain, nausea, sensitivity to light and sound, visual disturbances, and sometimes hours or even days of being completely knocked out of your normal routine.

And because migraines are so common, there is no shortage of advice about how to stop them.

Drink more water.

Take magnesium.

Avoid certain foods.

Put ice on your head.

Try essential oils.

Meditate.

I’ve actually been using and teaching a treatment to stop a migraine for decades, and that’s by using a Japanese pressure technique called Shiatsu. Now it doesn’t prevent a migraine from happening (although I’ve had people report back from doing the treatment a number of times, their migraine frequency dropped dramatically).

You can check out my eBook Managing Your Stress in Difficult Times: Succeeding in Times of Change on my website at www.Teplitz.com under Products for that treatment and a number of other treatments using Shiatsu.

Recently, I came across another interesting approach to get rid of migraines, and that is to brush your teeth with salt water.

Now that one got my attention!

Could something as simple as salt water and a toothbrush really have an effect on a migraine?

So...I decided to take a closer look at what the research actually says since I started seeing claims that brushing your teeth with salt water can help migraines.

At first glance, that did sound pretty strange even to me.

What could your teeth possibly have to do with a neurological disorder?

Well...there actually is a connection between oral health and migraine that researchers are investigating.

Several studies have even found an association between periodontal disease and migraines.

For example, a large community-based study involving more than 66,000 people found that periodontal disease was more common among people with migraine. After adjusting for other factors, the association remained statistically significant.

A 2023 systematic review examined eight studies and found that seven reported an association between periodontal disease and chronic migraine. The authors did say that larger, long-term studies and intervention trials were still needed.

A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis again found a statistically significant association between periodontitis and migraine.

So there really is something here worth investigating as to how our mouth affects migraines.

What the researchers were studying

The researchers wanted to find out whether stopping toothpaste use could affect migraine frequency and severity. Their theory was that certain toothpaste ingredients, including fluorides, benzoates, nitrates, glycerol, and essential oils such as eucalyptus and camphor, might trigger headaches in susceptible people.

They enrolled 106 adults, ages 18–59, who suffered from migraines. They had people in the study who experienced both aura and non-aura migraines. They were also not taking preventive migraine medications.

The participants were randomly divided into two groups:

• 53 people stopped using toothpaste and brushed their teeth with 0.9% normal saline instead.
• 53 people continued using their regular toothpaste.

The intervention lasted four weeks. The investigators did not know who was in which group when they assessed the outcomes.

What they found

At the beginning of the study, both groups were experiencing a median of three headache days per week, and both reported a median headache severity of 8 out of 10. These folks were real migraine sufferers!

After four weeks, the results were striking:

Outcome	Saline instead of toothpaste	Continued toothpaste
Headache days/week	1	2.5
Headache severity	1/10	7/10
Completely headache-free	32.6%	14.9%
≥50% reduction in headache days	58.1%	32.5%

The reduction in weekly headache days was statistically significant and so was the difference in headache severity. The differences in complete headache freedom and achieving at least a 50% reduction in headache frequency were also statistically significant.

So, to salt or not to salt, that is the question!

Since this was a small study and it was looking at toothpaste’s effects, the saltwater outcome was a bonus discovery.

Now the study used 9% saline solution, so they don’t know if that was a factor, or if it would work with a stronger or weaker salt solution.

So, what to do? If you’re a migraine sufferer, should you wait for more complete research to be done, or act now? While that’s a decision you’ll have to make, here’s my take on it.

It took 3 weeks for the benefits from stopping toothpaste to start to kick in, and after 4 weeks the differences were dramatic. Since migraines are so debilitating, if I were a migraine sufferer, I personally would give saltwater a shot. The idea of 32.6% being totally migraine-free versus only 14.9% in the toothpaste groups is a BIG DIFFERENCE.

Again, if you’re a migraine sufferer, it’s a decision you’ll have to make! And if it works, then the old statement from Star Trek deserves to be modified to: May You Live Long and Not Suffer!