5 Health Conditions Linked to Migraines

If you get migraine headaches, you may be at risk for heart attack, stroke, and other health conditions. Find out more to protect your health.

If you are one of the more than 29.5 million Americans with migraines, you already know that these headaches can cause pain, misery, and missed days from work, but you may not know that a growing body of research suggests they may also increase your risk for other conditions including depression, anxiety, and cardiovascular disease.

In some cases, treating a migraine can have positive spillover benefits on the other diseases that it travels with.

Depression and Anxiety. When it comes to the relationship between a migraine and psychological illnesses such as depression and anxiety, the migraine is both the chicken and the egg, says MaryAnn Mays, MD, a neurologist and the headache specialist at the Neurological Center for Pain at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

“It’s a bi-directional relationship. People with psychiatric illnesses get more migraines, but if you get migraines, your quality of life is lower and this leads to depression and you may get so worried about migraines that you develop an anxiety disorder.” One study showed that middle-aged women are 40 percent more likely to become depressed if they experience migraine headaches, and this risk doesn’t go away when their headache does.

In the study, women who had ever had a migraine headache were 36 percent more likely to become depressed, compared with their counterparts who never had a migraine. The findings were presented at the 2012 meeting of the American Academy of Neurology.

One positive outcome from the link between the two conditions is that some of the same treatments used to treat depression and anxiety can also treat a migraine, namely certain antidepressants. “If we treat one, the other may get better,” Dr. Mays says.

Cardiovascular Disease. Up to one-third of people with migraine experience an aura preceding their headache — some type of visual disturbance such as flashing lights or a temporary loss of vision. Some research shows that a migraine with aura may put you at greater risk for cardiovascular disease, including heart attack and stroke. One study, also presented at the 2013 American Academy of Neurology meeting, looked at data on more than 27,000 women participating in The Women's Health Study and found that it was one of the top risk factors for heart disease and stroke among women, second only to high blood pressure.

Researchers aren’t sure why a migraine with aura raises a risk of heart attack or stroke, but they do have some theories. “During a migraine, there is a release of pro-inflammatory chemicals that can damage a vessel wall, causing it to close off, which could cause a stroke or a heart attack,” Mays says.

Whether controlling the migraine will lower cardiovascular risks is not known either. “If you have a migraine with aura, take steps to control any other risk factors for stroke and heart attack,” she says. This means making sure your blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels are where they should be, losing weight if you need to, and quitting smoking if you still light up.

Obesity. Some evidence suggests that people who get migraine headaches are also more likely to be overweight and that migraines can become more frequent and more severe with weight gain. The common denominator here is likely inflammation, says Mays. Both a migraine and obesity are considered inflammatory states, she explains. “There is some work that shows that losing weight may help with migraine pain, too.”

Epilepsy. Both a migraine and the seizure disorder epilepsy are characterized by brain excitability, says Richard B. Lipton, MD, vice chair of the Saul R. Korey department of neurology, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and the director of the Montefiore Headache Center in New York City. “Whichever you have first, whether epilepsy or a migraine, you are twice as likely to get the other,” says Dr. Lipton.

“It’s not so much that epilepsy causes a migraine or that migraine causes epilepsy, it is that they travel together and we know at least part of that is genetic,” he says. “The two are linked in epidemiologic studies, and drugs that prevent seizures also have an impact on migraine headache.”

Indeed, researchers from Columbia University in New York City analyzed 500 families with two or more close relatives with epilepsy. They found that people with three or more close relatives with a seizure disorder were more than twice as likely to experience a migraine with aura than those whose families had fewer members with seizures.

Allergies. If you have nasal allergies, you may be more likely to also get migraines, Lipton explains. The reason is that the trigeminal nerve, which is involved in causing migraine also supplies the nasal mucosa. “Nasal allergies occur when there is irritation or inflammation of the nerve by allergens which leads to itchy, runny nose,” he says.

To protect your well-being, be aware of these risks and monitor your health along with treating migraines.