Women and migraines: Do our hormones cause us to experience migraines more often?

Woman with migraineCredit: Wikimedia Commons/ Inniverse, Wikimedia Commons/ Inniverse

Any form of sound or light is your worst enemy. Your headache is so severe that you cannot find any relief or way to get comfortable. Moving just an inch or even just lifting a limb makes your pain worse. You may also be experiencing some other symptoms, such as nausea or vision issues. You are experiencing a migraine. Millions of women experience migraines and adult women are more prone to migraines than men are. It is believed that our hormones may play a role in this.

Migraines and Your Menstrual Cycle

More than half of the migraines that women experience come on right around the time of her monthly period. Doctors often refer to this as a "menstrual migraine." The exact link between migraines and your menstrual cycle are unclear, but it is known that just before your monthly period, your levels of progesterone and estrogen, two female hormones, significantly drop. A migraine may be triggered by this drop because estrogen plays a role in controlling the chemicals in our brains that affect how we sense pain.

Migraines and Menopause

If your menstrual cycle and your migraines are closely linked, menopause may lessen the severity of your headaches. Any vomiting and nausea you experience along with a migraine may also decrease. Approximately two-thirds of women report that once they start menopause, their migraine symptoms improve.

On the other end of the spectrum, some women may notice that menopause triggers or worsens migraines. Why this occurs is unclear. Menopausal hormone therapy may play a role. However, once you have completely gone through menopause, you will likely notice that any worsening of migraine symptoms will go away.

Migraines and Birth Control Pills

Birth control pills may improve migraines for some women. They may help to make attacks less severe and reduce how many attacks a woman has. On the other hand, birth control pills may make migraines worse. Then, in other women, these pills have absolutely no effect in terms of migraine headaches. Why there are three different responses to taking birth control pills is not really understood. When women experience migraines as a result of taking birth control pills, they generally experience the headache during the final week of the cycle. The final week of a pack of regular birth control pills does not contain hormones. This means that the body's estrogen levels experience a sudden drop and this could possibly trigger a migraine.

Treating Migraine Headaches

Migraines cannot be cured, but for most women, they can be managed. There are a variety of medications available that you and your doctor can discuss. Some medications are taken daily to try and prevent migraines from occurring in the first place and others are taken at the first sign of a migraine. Your doctor may prescribe each kind, depending on how frequent and severe your migraines are. It may take some trial and error to find the right medication or combination of medications for you.

There are also lifestyle changes you can make to help prevent how many migraines you experience. These may include a regular sleep schedule, regular physical activity, coping well with stress, limiting or avoiding known triggers, not skipping meals, a healthy diet and limiting your intake of caffeine and alcohol.

Some women report success with certain alternative methods. These may include things, such as biofeedback, relaxation and acupuncture. If your migraines are anxiety or depression related, counseling may be beneficial.