In fact, around 30 percent of people who experience recurrent migraines report alcohol as a trigger. People who get migraine attacks during or after drinking should consider reducing or eliminating alcohol. If they find this too challenging, they may have alcohol use disorder, which warrants treatment. People who experience a headache after drinking should not assume that it is a migraine, especially if they have symptoms consistent with other types of headaches.
What happens to your body when you stop drinking?
Results of the logistic regression models of the log odds of migraine attack in relation to alcohol consumption. 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.
How to minimize headaches from drinking wine
Forty people aged 21 to 40 years old participated in the study, half of whom were people with alcohol use disorder who had stopped drinking for one to six months prior to the study (the early abstinent group). And if your red wine headache is sudden, intense, or accompanied by symptoms you’ve never experienced before like fainting, fever, or stiff neck, see a doctor ASAP. If you think red wine is causing your headaches, try keeping a food journal to help you pinpoint your unique triggers. If you have a pounding headache the next morning, it’s likely a hangover and not a migraine caused by red wine. It may also be helpful to keep a food journal to help narrow the list down of food and drink triggers. Since wines are made from a variety of grapes, preservatives, and other ingredients, there are many potential culprits.
Can I drink during a migraine attack?
Hi, I’m Dr. Amaal Starling, a neurologist at Mayo Clinic specializing in headache disorders. Who gets it, the symptoms, the diagnosis, and most importantly, the treatment. Whether you’re why does alcohol cause migraines looking for answers for yourself or someone you love, we are here to give you the best information available. It affects each person differently with a wide range of disease severity.
Alcohol as a Migraine Trigger
You might have tried some alternative therapies, but did you know about these complementary and integrative treatments? For more information on alternative migraine treatments, visit our Resource Library. It’s important to stay updated on the latest migraine research and treatment strategies.
- In a 2019 survey of 2,197 folks with migraine, nearly 80 percent of folks reporting alcohol-induced migraine actually blamed red wine.
- This could potentially explain why some people with migraine find they can’t drink certain darker drinks like beer or red wine, however, more research is needed to find out.
- Individuals reported a mean (SD) of 6.1 (3.3) migraine days per month and 3.7 (1.7) migraine attacks per month.
- Expecting someone to push through or just take your mind off of it is never good advice.
Individuals predisposed to headaches may find even small amounts of wine triggering due to quercetin. A small study from 2001 found that 16 people with wine intolerance who took antihistamines (anti-allergy meds) before drinking red wine had no notable improvements from the https://ecosoberhouse.com/ treatment. The researchers concluded that there’s no correlation between wine sensitivity/intolerance and the drink’s histamine content. In a 2019 survey of 2,197 folks with migraine, nearly 80 percent of folks reporting alcohol-induced migraine actually blamed red wine.
- It’s often accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and extreme sensitivity to light and sound.
- The conclusion was that vasodilatation is hardly compatible with ADs trigger activity of all primary headaches and a common pathogenetic mechanism at cortical, or more likely at subcortical/brainstem, level is more plausible.
- Keep in mind that these remedies, like aromatherapy and acupressure, have limited research showing effectiveness and whether they actually work usually varies from person to person.
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- Our Move Against Migraine Facebook group is full of mothers with migraine who can offer encouragement and support throughout your journey.
- Wine contains some ingredients such biogenic amines (histamine, tyramine, phenylethylamine etc), sulphites, phenolic flavonoids that theoretically could provoke headache.
- They brush it off as something else, and they stay home and don’t come to the hospital.” If you experience this kind of stabbing pain, treat it as an emergency.
- Recently another study group reported a high percentage of patients referring red wine as the most frequent trigger between alcoholic drinks [24] but subsequently it did not report any of them as a trigger [30].
Making sure to drink plenty of water during and after alcohol consumption can decrease the chance of headaches. You might have heard that red wine is most likely to cause problems. But other drinks like sparkling wine, beer, and hard liquor may be just as likely, if not more, to cause problems. I am an updates editor at NBC Select covering a wide range of wellness topics, including sunscreen for kids, deodorants and antiperspirants, and rosacea treatments.
Heart Health
Many migraine sufferers find that keeping a diary helps them identify their own personal triggers and understand their patterns of migraines better. Drinking alcohol is a trigger for migraine in some people – one study found around a third (33%) of people who get migraines are sensitive to alcohol.4 Others react to hunger, or certain foods. If you regularly have signs and symptoms of migraine, keep a record of your attacks and how you treated them.