Possible answers were “Yes”, “No”, “Unclear” or “Not applicable”. If a cross-sectional study received seven or more positive answers, a case–control eight and a cohort study nine, ten or 11, their assessments were described as having a low risk of bias. A high risk of bias was reported when a cross-sectional study received five or fewer “yes” responses, a case–control fewer than six and a cohort study below seven. A moderate risk of bias was assigned when the paper received positive answers between mentioned ranges.
- You can get peer support, and explore treatment options like therapy and medication to stop drinking.
- Migraine is more common, affecting around 12% of people in the United States.
- And, of course, continuing to drink to avoid hangover symptoms can increase your risk of alcohol dependence in the long run.
- There are also behavioral treatment options and lifestyle changes that can help.
- This is especially true for people prone to headaches or migraine without alcohol.
The principal substances of the alcoholic drinks thought to be involved in headache provoked by alcoholic drinks are successively discussed. Seven articles used International Headache Society (IHS) criteria from 1988 [46, 47, 50, 51, 56, 59, 60]. While migraine is a common disease that affects 39 million Americans, no two migraine experiences are the alcohol and headaches same. Symptoms can vary from light sensitivity and dizziness to food cravings or body chills. Explore these Frequently Asked Questions about migraine symptoms to see if you might be experiencing migraine. Light sensitivity is a common symptom of migraine (as is sensitivity to sounds or smells), but not everyone who has the disease will experience it.
What Are the Symptoms?
The American Migraine Foundation Resource Library provides a wealth of articles designed to assist you in understanding your symptoms and treatment options. If a doctor has prescribed medication for your chronic migraine and you choose to move forward with that line of treatment, follow instructions carefully. It is crucial to take medications at the recommended times to ensure maximum effectiveness.
Recent studies show that alcohol acts as a trigger at least occasionally in a percentage similar to that of the previous studies (37%), but as a frequent/consistent trigger in only 10% of the patients [22,24]. Curiously, in some countries, the percentages of alcohol or wine as migraine triggers were negligible, 6.1 [25] and 1.4% [26], perhaps depending on the degree of alcohol habits. Criteria to recognize habits for alcohol consumption was various in almost each study. Some of them assessed the drinking by daily alcohol intake [44, 45, 47, 48, 55, 58, 59, 62], part of them measured drinking within one week [44, 47, 51, 53, 60, 61] or month [36, 44, 47, 49, 51].
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Although, as we’ll discuss below, there are other factors that can lead to headaches no matter what form of alcohol you consume. It is possible that alcohol itself can trigger headache, especially when ingested in large quantities such as in hangover headache, and some components of the alcoholic drinks can reinforce alcohol action or vice versa. Another study shows that of the 429 migraine patients, 17% are sensitive to all forms of alcohol, 11.2% to red wine but not to white wine or clear spirits, while 28% are sensitive to beer (none only to this alone) [19]. The concept of dietary migraine (migraine provoked by some foods such as cheese, chocolate, citrus fruit, alcoholic beverages) has been with us for more than 200 years, since Fothergill’s first description in 1778 [1,2].