Approximately 30 million people suffer from migraines in the United States. And for many, relief may be found by releasing specific muscles around the head that exert pressure on certain nerves.

In fact, the most common trigger point is the brow area, which can be alleviated by performing an upper facelift or brow lift. Called the “migraine lift,” it’s effective for both severe episodic and chronic refractory migraines, according to Adam Hamawy, M.D., F.A.C.S., owner and director of Princeton Plastic Surgeons in Princeton, N.J.

Dr. Hamawy“As with many findings in science, the discovery of this technique was accidental,” Dr. Hamawy tells The Aesthetic Channel.

An Ohio plastic surgeon, Bahman Guyuron, M.D., discovered incidentally that many of his facelift and brow-lift patients had a reduction in migraines. “By investigating the anatomy and what structures were released during the procedure, Dr. Guyuron found that the supraorbital nerve and the zygomaticotemporal nerve were released, thus causing some migraines to disappear,” Dr. Hamawy says.

Dr. Guyuron also noticed that his Botox patients were experiencing the same migraine relief. “However, whereas Botox relaxes those muscles for about 3 months at a time, surgery releases those muscles permanently,” Dr. Hamawy says.

Dr. Guyuron first published his findings in 2000, and now there are over 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals about this technique.

In a 2009 study in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Dr. Guyuron reported the results of a placebo-controlled surgical trial of his technique for the treatment of migraine headaches, which found that compared to the placebo group the treatment group achieved statistically significant improvements in all validated migraine headache measurements at 1 year.

“One of the criticisms against this technique is that the improvement is simply a placebo effect from undergoing the surgery, not from the specific release of the triggers,” Dr. Hamawy explains. “The study basically debunks that myth.”