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Why Does Alcohol Sometimes Trigger a Migraine Attack?
At Monument, you can speak with a specialized physician, like myself, to get personalized information and care. If you regularly have signs and symptoms of migraine, keep a record of your attacks and how you treated them. Then make an appointment with your health care provider alcohol causes migraines to discuss your headaches. As dehydration can cause headaches, staying hydrated when consuming alcohol is key. Aim to drink plenty of water before, after, and during alcohol consumption. The alcohol in the blood increases more quickly with liquor than with beer.
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There are exceptions to this rule, however, such as tequila—a light-colored liquor that nevertheless carries high levels of congeners. To define this important issue, we have reviewed alcohol as a trigger of primary headaches and discussed the possible correlation of the results with the principal pathogenetic theories of the primary headaches. If you feel an attack coming on when you’ve had alcohol, stop drinking straight away. Drink plenty of water and take your usual rescue medication such as triptans or pain relief. It’s important to always check the leaflet that comes with your medication just in case it says that you should not mix it with alcohol, or ask your doctor about it when they prescribe it. Mixed models obtain the differences between each individual effect and the population estimates, thus estimates from Table 4 can be adjusted to provide an individualized model for each user.
- So, it’s possible that a histamine sensitivity could make you more susceptible to a headache when sipping on the red stuff.
- More research will help to determine the effects of specific alcohol content on a person’s headaches.
- The headaches often occur along with other symptoms related to drinking alcoholic beverages.
- Changes in the brainstem and its interactions with the trigeminal nerve, a major pain pathway, might be involved.
- In a 2018 study involving 2,197 people with migraine, 25% of the participants who had stopped or always avoided drinking did so because alcohol triggered migraine attacks.
- Alcoholic drinks also contain certain compounds besides the alcohol itself that may trigger migraine attacks – these are the byproducts of alcohol fermentation.
Is Alcohol Consumption a Trigger for Migraine?
Alcohol is a diuretic that increases urine production and can lead to dehydration. There were a total of 2990 embedded missing days (2990/46,820, 6.4%) resulting in 43,830 days (90 for each individual) eligible for analysis. Migraine days after the first day of attack (3665 migraine days) were removed from the models, leading to a dataset with 40,165 diary entries. A total of 32,911 complete cases including 4679 migraine attacks were analyzed.
Alcohol intake behavior
While migraine is a common disease that affects 39 million Americans, no two migraine experiences are the 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. Yawning and fatigue are typical symptoms of prodrome, the first phase of a migraine attack. Other symptoms can include food cravings and difficulty concentrating.
They found limited importance of nutrition, including alcohol intake, in the triggering of migraine. People who have frequent migraine attacks may wish to consider migraine prevention medications such as topiramate (Topamax), divalproex (Depakote), or propranolol (Inderal). For instance, alcohol byproducts called congeners have been linked to headaches.
Migraine symptoms
Wine (more red than white) and other grape products have been shown to have an endothelium-dependent vaso-relaxing activity, probably via nitric oxide (NO)-mediated pathway; ethanol and resveratrol cause no relaxation [62]. Alcohol-free red wine polyphenol extract increases endothelial NO release [64]. However in vivo studies show that only the ingestion of red wine with alcohol, but not of dealcoholized red wine, provokes arterial dilatation and thus the effect of wine is due to ethanol [65].