Headache

draw condition Severe Headaches Associated With Higher Temperatures, Lower Barometric Pressures Although handsome numbers of concern sufferers, particularly individuals who struggle with migraines, attribute their pain to the weather condition, there has been little scientific evidence to back up their assertions. Now, a study of more than 7,000 patients, curb by queryers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), provides some of the first large-scale data on how environmental conditions weather, as well as tonal pattern pollution influence headache pain.Reported in the March 10 issue of the journal Neurology, the describeings demonstrate that higher temperatures, and to a lesser degree, write down barometric pressure, contribute to severe headaches. Migraine headaches affect a large proportion of the world, notes Kenneth Mukamal, MD, MPH, the studys first author and a medico in the Division of General Medicine and Primary C are at BIDMC. Approximately 18 percent of women and 6 percent of men in the U. S. report having migraine headaches, particularly young and middle-aged adults. Knowing that migraines stick out be set off by triggers, including certain foods, alcohol, stress and hormones, Mukamal and his coauthors refractory to study whether environmental factors were also acting as headache triggers.. bearing temperature, humidity and barometric pressure are among the most frequent reasons that large number give for their headache pain, explains Mukamal, who is also an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. But none of these reasons have been uniformly verified. We wanted to find out if we could verify this clinical folklore. We also wanted to determine whether airwave pollutants trigger headaches, much as they have been found to trigger strokes. In other words, says Mukamal, our study design was able to directly compare weather and air pollution conditions right before an emergency visit with those analogous f actors measured earlier and later the same month. Certainly our results are consistent with the idea that severe headaches can be triggered by external factors, says Mukamal. These findings attend tell us that the environment around us does affect our wellness and, in terms of headaches, may be impacting many, many people on a daily basis. Mukamal recommends that headache patients sit down with their doctors to identify the triggers that lead to their headache symptoms, adding that even though the weather cant be altered, doctors might be able to prescribe medication that can be administered prophylactically to help avert the onset of weather-related headaches. Furthermore, he adds, On a population basis, we need to be concerned about incremental temperature rises anyhow, and should advocate for answerable environmental management.The annual cost attributed to migraines is estimated at $17 billion, millions of people are adversely affected and the public health implications may b e enormous. This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of environmental Health Sciences and the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. Study coauthors include BIDMC investigators Gregory A. Wellenius, ScD, and Murray A. Mittleman, MD, DrPH and Helen H. Suh, ScD, of the Harvard School of Public Health.