Weather Changes Tied to Migraine Headaches

100 years ago it was fairly common to hear someone say, “Don’t stay out in the sun too long — you’ll get a headache.” But while most of these kinds of old wives tales have been discarded in the modern era, new research suggests that warm weather can indeed give you a headache — or even a debilitating migraine.

Published in the professional journal Neurology, a new study suggests that changes in temperature and barometric pressure could cause headaches and migraines. Interestingly, the same study considered whether air pollution could cause intense headaches, but found no correlation between elevated levels of air pollution and people suffering with chronic headaches or migraines.

In general, the study found that high temperatures increase the risk of headaches by about 7 ½ percent for every increase in temperature of 5°. Additionally, low barometric pressure was found to be precipitous to an increase in hospital admissions for cases of serious headache and migraines.

It is estimated that there are 28 million migraine headache sufferers in the United States. Treatments for the condition range from strong painkillers, visualization and biofeedback techniques, as well as anti-inflammatory drugs that help reduce swelling in the brain tissue. But the cause of migraine headaches has so far eluded researchers, even though many sufferers have reported experiencing the attacks after a change in the weather.

The study, which looked at the emergency room records of over 7000 patients treated for migraine headaches over a seven-year period, found that emergency room visits related to migraine headaches rose significantly in the 24 hour period following a temperature spike.

However, high temperatures by themselves did not seem to trigger migraines — only temperatures significantly higher than average for the region. So before you pack up and move to a colder part of the country, be aware that it’s not the warmth of the area that seems to be related to developing migraine headaches, but the change in weather.

And the correlation was even found to exist in the middle of winter. Unseasonably warm winter days also precipitated an increase in emergency room visits by migraine sufferers. Also, the same spike in migraine headaches was observed whenever the barometric pressure dropped significantly, though it appeared to take effect 2-3 days after the pressure dropped.

So why does the weather cause migraines and headaches? Although researchers aren’t certain, they theorized that a drop in barometric pressure could be affecting the fluid protecting the brain from the inside of the skull, resulting in increased pressure on external brain tissue.