IDAHO FALLS - More than 30-million Americans get migraines. Many of those people have tried numerous prescription drugs to help alleviate the pain.
Now doctors have discovered a treatment that could prevent migraines from happening in the first place, Botox.

If you've ever had a migraine, you know how excruciating it can be. It may start as a small headache, then your vision blurs, any amount of light sends piercing pain into your eyes and even the tiniest noise makes your head feel like it's going to explode. And then, you get sick. Marsha Gosselin knows these symptoms all to well, "I'd loose about 12 days a month."

Conventional treatment only dealt with Marsha's migraine once it happened and sometimes not even then. "Well that kinda defeats the purpose because you are still sick a couple of days. The family has to tip toe around. Everything has to be dark. You walk around the house like Jackie O. with dark glasses on."

Most of the people who use Botox simply want to look better, but for Marsha It was a matter of getting her life back and simply feeling better. After trying everything, despite her fear of needles, she began to research Botox as a treatment for her migraines.

"Botox has been around since, well it was FDA approved in 1989. So we've had a long history with it, but it was only when we first started using it for facial spasms that we started to see the cosmetic side affect of reducing those dynamic lines and wrinkles. And it was when we started to use it for that purpose that we actually discovered it has a great use in migraine patients." explains Dr. Catherine Durboraw with The Center For Aesthetics.

The procedure is simple. A numbing agent is applied and Once it starts working, here come the needles.

Dr. Durboraw says, "Probably 80% of the relief that migraine patients get is from the number one area that we treat cosmetically too, which is the globella fura. That's the area between our brows. Whenever I am treating a migraine patient we always treat there. When I'm doing it I ask patients about their trigger points. They'll start pointing to the back of their neck, to their temples to over their brow and then you make sure you always inject those areas too."

During the procedure Dr. Durboraw shows, "Marsha has trigger zones along her temple. So we always do some injections there."

She checks on Marsha during the procedure, "Doin ok?"

"uh hum." As a matter of fact, Marsha's been doing okay since she's been coming to Dr. Durboraw for a little over a year. "I come every 3 months regularly. Look forward to the shots in my head, because I don't have a migraine."

"They are my happiest patients. They are people that you can really transform their entire outlook on life because they've been given this opportunity to be pain free and its a very rewarding treatment for me to be doing as a practitioner." says Dr. Durboraw.

As they finish the procedure, "You get three months of wonderful relief!"

But that wonderful relief doesn't come without side affects. Join us tomorrow night at 10 as I look into the Side affects of Botox as a treatment for migraines, the FDA trials, and how insurance companies are responding to the treatment.