Obesity as a new risk factor for Chronic Daily Headaches

The effect of obesity on the disease passage has been studied for a long time. Obesity is claimed to aggravate many illnesses and now it has become known that it may contribute to chronic daily headaches, researchers reported, April 15, Miami Beach.

The American Academy of Neurology meeting has shown that the risk of migraine attacks evolution into chronic daily headache is increased in obese migraine patients. Migraine characteristics haven't been detected in most of the headaches.

The leading researcher of the study, M.D., of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, Marcelo Bigal asserted obesity was a risk factor for chronic daily headaches. Chronic headaches develop in obese people at a higher rate, they are more severe and cause more frequent absences from school or work.

According to the statistics, given by Dr. Bigal, about 5.3% of overweight people in the USA suffer from chronic daily headaches, while the average number for all Americans is 4%. Considering only people classified as obese this number approaches 7%. Dr. Bigal said that for the most part preceding sporadic migraine headaches had evolved into the chronic daily headaches. He inferred that the risk of developing headaches among obese people was 30% higher in comparison with normal weight people.

The most probable category of people running the risk to develop a chronic daily headache includes obese women, 30 to 50 years old. The factor preventing younger individuals and older people from getting chronic daily headache remains unknown.

However, obese patients suffering from chronic daily headaches do not reveal significant influence of obesity on the response of treatment. According to Dr. Bigal, three months treatment has shown no difference in severity or frequency of headaches between non-obese and obese patients.

The headaches keep people out of work. Here are the numbers: more than four days of work in 1 year were missed by the reason of headache by 33% of obese people; about 27.2% of overweight people; 27.2% of normal weight people and 26.1% of underweight people.

30,850 of 143,433 people interrogated by Dr. Bigal and his associates had at least one severe headache in the past year. Collected information included height, body weight and sex of the questionnaire participants. This enabled the division into the groups according to the body mass index. It appeared that two-thirds of the people were women, whose average age was 43 years.

Among the other findings in the study:

• Obese people suffer severe headache 20% more often than those of normal weight.
• The duration of headaches had no significant difference among the groups.

Obesity, previously linked with migraine headaches now should be considered as an independent risk factor, director of the Oregon Headache Clinic in Milwaukie Ore., Christina Peterson reported. She said the information would be useful for many doctors to make the proper medication choice for headache treatment. Dr. Peterson suggested the older medications aimed at treating headache promoted weight gain should be replaced by the new ones, including some anti-epileptics, which would help patients to lose weight.