Migraine, My Friend?

Migraine is not usually seen as a friend. In the U.S., more than 28 million Americans are migraineurs, suffering regularly from visual and aural disturbances. They usually suffer from an accompanying, excruciating headache as well. How could such a thing be termed a friend?

Despite the pain and inconvenience, migraines have been shown to have benefits – at least to women. Recent studies (early 2007) by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland show that there is a sense in which migraines can be a friend to women, though not to men.

Migraine and Women

The Johns Hopkins study, carried out with 1,448 women over a period of 12 years, indicated that migraines could reduce memory loss in women. Researchers administered a series of thinking tests to the women over the 12-year period. The assessments were word-recall tests. They were designed to show how well the memory was performing.

At first, the migraineurs performed worse than others who did not suffer from migraines. Something unexpected happened, however. By the end of the study, the decline in the migraine patients’ ability to recall words was 17-percent less than that of the women who did not suffer migraine. Migraine patients who were more than 50-years old showed the least amount of memory loss.

Migraine and Men

On the other side of the coin, it seems that migraine may not be such a good friend to men. Another new study suggests that they can lead to increased risk for heart disease in men, and can be very detrimental to an aging man’s heart.

This study was done by researchers at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. They asked 20,084 men who had no previous history of heart disease to answer questions detailing their cardiovascular health over 24 years. The questions inquired into heart problems like stroke, heart attack, heart bypass surgery, and angina. The researchers found that men who reported migraine episodes during the first 5 years of the study were more likely to suffer heart disease or heart attack later. According to their findings, out of every 10,000 men without migraines, only 8.5 reported heart disease. Out of 10,000 men who had experienced migraines, 10.4 had some form of heart disease.

This study, the researchers say, indicates that migraines in men could be linked to two additional risk factors for heart disease: high body mass indexes and artherosclerosis.