New evidence has come out on why women suffer from more migraines then men. And this is appropo today because I am having a migraine at this very moment! Yes, yes! It’s migraine time, today, so I totally get it when Dr. Andrew Charles, director of the Headache Research and Treatment Program in the UCLA Department of Neurology, describes a migraine as a “spectacular neuro-physiological event.” What’s even more interesting is that Charles, along with neurologist Jan Lewis Brandes, founder of the Nashville Neuroscience Group, believe that migraines are more prominent in women because they’re so intrinsically tied to hormones. Aw, gee, great.
Says Brandes, girls and boys tend to have equal numbers of migraines — until puberty. When girls begin menstruating, and their hormones begin fluctuating, girls experience dramatically more migraines. That’s due, say doctors, to increases of estrogen in their system. Buuuuuuuuut, then again, doctors aren’t really sure. Because migraines are totally confusing and unclear and nobody really knows what causes them.
But! According to treatheadaches.com, the key is reducing the number of migraines people have. Because apparently, “migraines beget migraines.” In effect, as you have more and more migraines, your brain is permanently impacted. “We’ve begun to see from researchers that the frequency of migraine attack is linked to permanent changes in the brain, and I think that changes the playing field for patients and those of us who take care,” said Dr. Brandes. “We really need to think carefully about how to control the frequency of attacks and really need to do it earlier rather than later.”
[NPR]Original by Julie Gerstein
