Pregnancy and Menopause – Do They Affect your Headaches and Migraines?

A lot of women link headaches and migraines to pregnancy and menopause. But what really is the truth behind experiencing headaches and migraines during periods of pregnancy and menopause? Here is what Dr. Beth, an Osteopath at Melbourne Headache Solutions explained.
 
There had been a lot of confusion surrounding the effects of pregnancy and menopause on headaches and migraines. That’s what we are going to make clear of. According to Dr. Beth, when women go through pregnancy or menopause, there are many hormonal changes that the body experiences and that is how they affect headaches and migraines. When you go through these periods, things tend to fluctuate up and down and there are three possible things that could happen to the headaches or migraines that you are suffering from.
 

• Your headaches and migraines disappear.
• They will get worse.
• They won’t change at all.

 
One of these three things happens but obviously, you want the first possibility to occur. But headaches and migraines have different effects on women. Some women tend to get the wrong information about headaches and migraines. For instance, they might be advised by their doctor on how headaches and migraines disappear when they reach the menopausal stage, especially if they have been suffering from the condition for a long period of time. Although there were cases in which women have experienced a lesser occurrence of headaches and migraines, there are those who continue to endure the pain brought about by these conditions after hitting the menopausal stage.
 
The same thing is true with pregnancy. There are women who expect that their headaches and migraines will go away after giving birth. Yes, it may be possible to some but this is not always the case. Also, there are those who have experienced relief from headaches and migraines while they were pregnant but suffered from daily attacks after having their baby.
 
In other words, what other women experience does not necessarily mean you will experience it too. It does not always work that way and that’s something that you need to bear in mind.

Women who noticed that their migraines had disappeared when they hit menopause are more likely to have had a hormonal component into their migraines or headaches throughout their history. Migraines can be mentally related or cycle-related and they are more likely to change during pregnancy or menopause. That is because hormones change during this period. But if you have not noticed that your headaches and migraines are linked to your cycle, they are unlikely to change during pregnancy or menopause because although the hormones change, headaches and migraines won’t link to them in the first place.
 
However, this does not exactly mean that pregnancy and menopause have an effect on your headaches and migraines. Instead, they are less likely to have an effect, the reason why they affect people in a different manner.
 
Everybody has different triggers. There is a long list of triggers for headaches and migraine sufferers. Some believe chocolate, stress, alcohol and even citrus to be triggers and avoid them. But they are actually just the general things which are more likely to set people off. But it does not generally apply to everyone. What sets one person off does not have to set another one off. These triggers affect people very differently.
 
As mentioned earlier, headaches and migraines can result to one in three things during pregnancy and menopause—it will make you better, it will make you worse or it won’t have any change at all. In pregnancy and menopause, your hormones are basically not the cause of headaches and migraines. They are just the things that trigger you off like food, stress or alcohol. What needs to be done is treating the underlying cause to prevent the triggers from setting you off. The underlying disorder needs to be determined and treated to get long-term changes.
 
How about you? What were the changes that you experienced and saw with your headaches and migraines during the period of your pregnancy or menopause? We would like to hear from you. Leave comments on how you dealt with your headaches and migraines while you were pregnant or reaching the menopause stage.