A silver lining for migraine sufferers?

In this study, which followed nearly 75,000 women for 10 years, women with active migraine were 20% to 30% less likely to develop type 2 diabetes over the course of the study than women with no history of migraine. In addition, if the migraine condition improved and the headaches lessened, the chances of developing diabetes went up. This supports the notion that migraine is protective against developing diabetes, and this is not simply a chance association. Headache specialists had long observed that their migraine patient populations did not develop diabetes as frequently as the general population, so this finding was not entirely unexpected. The reason for this relationship, though, remains unclear; after all, what could it be about having a headache that could make your blood sugar and insulin function improve? Looked at the other way around, one consideration could be that elevated blood sugar levels are somehow protective against developing a headache. Yet another explanation may have to do with CGRP, a protein molecule in the body that is active in both conditions and may be the factor that links them. This was a large, well-conducted study. Two limitations were that it only studied women and that the population studied was a rather homogenous group of mostly white professionals. Nonetheless, experts feel that the findings can likely be generalized to other populations. Migraines may protect against alcoholism There is another beneficial effect of migraine: research has...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Diabetes Headache Source Type: blogs