It’s already known that stress can trigger headaches and migraines, and that the more stress you experience the more headaches and migraines you have.

But now, a new study has identified the pattern of events between stress and development of migraine.

Researchers found that when people experience a stressful day, followed by a less stressful day, they were more likely to trigger a migraine. The results were most significant during the first six hours of stress decline, with people being 5 times more likely to develop a migraine during this time.

As a migraine suffer this present two solutions. The first is to continue to be chronically stressed, balancing between risk of migraine from stress and risk from relaxation, but this is probably a bad idea for overall health and well-being. The second and most preferred solution is to reduce the risk of stress in the first place, thereby avoiding the trigger for a migraine.

This presents behaviour change as a migraine management tool for sufferers. We have talked previously on this blog about methods of stress reduction and relaxation such as mindfulness and exercise. Now stress management isn’t appealing just for anxiety, but for many more aspects of our health.

Faye Prior (Researcher)

Source

Lipton, R., Buse, D., Hall, C., Tennen, H., DeFreiras, T. et al. (2014). Reduction in perceived stress as a migraine trigger. Neurology, Publish ahead of print March 26^th, doi: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000000332.

Image: https://flic.kr/p/gSBKuk