The Link Between Migraine And Obesity

Migraine is a very common problem that we see in people between the ages of 25-55. It involves severe persistent, vascular headache and an intense throbbing pain in one particular area of the head which can last for duration of a few hours to even up to three days.

It is accompanied by various other symptoms like vomiting, nausea, sensitivity to sound and light etc. It has been seen that migraine affects women more than me and in total it has been found to affect more than 10% of the population.

Also Read: Surprising Facts About Obesity

The reason behind this version of extreme headache is not clear but in a number of cases one thing about this can be said for sure and that it is somehow related to obesity.

Obesity today has become more of an epidemic and several studies on 'are overweight people prone to migraine?’ has shown a link between the two.

Also Read: A Side Effect Of Maternal Obesity

Some studies were more focused on chronic migraine and overweight, however now a lot of them have even shown a connection with less frequent attacks migraine headache. Now, how obese people are prone to migraine headache is a question that needs to be answered in detail.

Read on the following points to know more about it.

1. To understand the association between the two one must know that distribution of the fat tissues i.e. subcutaneous fat tissue and visceral fat tissue in the body is dependent on the gender and the age of a person.

The subcutaneous fat tissue in the body is responsible for the production of such hormones which play a vital role in causing inflammation.

2. Excess of fat cells in the body take sit to an inflammatory state where such hormones are secreted which are responsible for generating pain and quite a similar release of hormones have been noticed during a migraine.

Thus, it does show some kind of connection between the two health conditions.

3. In a study conducted on this topic showed that people who are overweight have nearly 81% more chances of suffering from migraine than those who were not. It did not state that excess weight is the cause behind it but stated it as a risk factor.

4. People who are not overweight and still suffer from migraine only have a 3% probability of it growing up to a situation of chronic migraine headaches whereas if they are overweight this percent can increase up to 3 times more and with obesity it grows to a whooping 5 times more than those with normal weight.

5. Patients suffering from migraine have a higher level of LDL cholesterol, insulin, glucose etc. which again is a lot similar to overweight people. So here excess weight can give an additive effect to the patient who is already suffering from migraines.

6. As stated before overweight is not a cause for people to be suffering from migraine but it does increase the frequency of the attacks to a great extent.

7. The ties between migraines and overweight have been studied by a number of researchers and the hormones that are released by the hypothalamus of the brains and also the fat cells deposited in the body are somewhere to be blamed. Thus, it can also be said that adopting a healthier lifestyle can be helpful here.