It can happen even if you drink less than people who don’t get migraine headaches. A 2022 study in people with migraine, however, found that drinking alcohol didn’t affect the probability of a migraine attack 24 hours after drinking. To prevent an alcohol-related migraine headache, try sipping your drink slowly or avoiding triggers. The questionnaires were filled without the presence of an interviewer, and did not include any recognizable data to assure full anonymity of the collected data. The questionnaires included demographics, headache history and characteristics, health-related habits (smoking and alcohol consumption), and hangover symptoms. The similarity between the symptomatology of these two common disorders, migraine and hangover, has led us to compare alcohol hangover symptoms in migraine sufferers and nonsufferers.
What to know about headaches after alcohol
Learn more about the genetic nature of migraine, including how genetics are linked to migraine risk and what steps you can take to prevent migraine attacks. Hangovers or withdrawal from alcohol can worsen anxiety symptoms, especially among people who drink heavily or those with alcohol use disorder. Anxiety occurs in addition to the typical health risks, which range from risky behaviors to weight gain, liver damage, and other physical effects. Many hangover symptoms arise due to detoxification, the physical process of ridding the body of toxic chemicals caused by alcohol consumption.
Migraine with aura is a type of migraine that is typically accompanied by vision and sensory changes. People with this type of migraine may experience other symptoms as well, including difficulty speaking, vision changes, and lack of coordination. If you regularly consume caffeine, skipping your usual morning cup of coffee or going too long without it can trigger withdrawal headaches, says Dr. Li.
Health Conditions
To pinpoint the exact cause of your head pain, it’s helpful to look at your habits and additional symptoms you may be experiencing. We’ve rounded up some of the most common culprits, plus the best treatment options. “We don’t really know for sure how alcoholic beverages trigger headaches,” Martin says. One theory involves chemicals called histamines, which are released by the immune system and are best known for their role in causing allergy symptoms. The exact reasons why alcohol triggers migraine attacks are not fully understood, but there are a few likely culprits.
Enzymes, mainly in the liver, metabolize (break down) alcohol, releasing a poisonous byproduct called acetaldehyde. This causes oxidative stress (an imbalance between helpful antioxidants and harmful free radicals that can lead to disease), marked by excess toxins in the body. In addition to headaches, common symptoms include daytime sleepiness, fatigue, irritability, trouble thinking, focusing and remembering and slowed reaction times.
- Many different factors can contribute to a hangover as a result of drinking.
- In Europe, alcohol consumption is higher than in Asian countries, but in Europe alcohol as a trigger is reported more frequently than it is in Asia 87.
- If you’re not sure what’s causing your migraine episodes, a headache diary can help you identify potential triggers and figure out how best to avoid them.
- Research shows that wines with the greatest histamine content are more likely to cause migraines.
Hangover symptoms among migraine and non-migraine sufferers
- More than half of those who experience cluster headaches say that alcohol is a trigger.
- Similarly, a 2019 study investigating the differences in clinical features of cluster headaches between 131 drinkers and nondrinkers in Japan discovered that alcohol triggered a cluster headache in 57% of participants.
- If you want to test to see if alcohol is a trigger, test one of these best alcohols for migraine and headaches on a day when you feel good and other triggers are low.
- Alcohol increases urination, which can lead to dehydration, and people who drink alcohol may not drink as much water, intensifying the water loss.
- And though the immediate effects might lessen some of the worry or dread you feel, this change is short-term, and the long-term consequences can make matters worse.
Alcohol-induced headaches generally resolve within 72 hours of onset, although they can and many do last for a shorter time period. While these headaches eventually do subside, it is important to talk to a medical provider about headache triggers and develop a plan to minimize them. Migraine is complex, and other neurological conditions may cause migraine-like symptoms. For this reason, it is important to see a doctor about migraine symptoms or chronic headaches, with or without drinking. People who get hangovers that trigger a migraine may also wish to avoid alcohol with high levels of congeners.
Our patients matter
There are also behavioral treatment options and lifestyle changes that can help. Many things can trigger a migraine, from stress at work to changes in the weather to foods like aged cheese. And for about one-third of people who have migraines, alcohol is also a trigger. Talk with your doctor about how long after drinking alcohol to wait before you can take any prescription migraine or OTC medications. Without a consistent cause-and-effect situation, though, a number of factors — not just alcohol — could be triggering your migraine headache. Another thing that remains unclear is if the quantity and type of alcohol you drink determines whether you will get a migraine headache.
Associated Data
Observations with missing information in any of the independent variables were handled with listwise deletion, that is, only complete cases were used for parameter estimation. With 30 years of paying close attention to consumption and the boundaries, I have evolved to limiting high alcohol, highly tannic, and heavily processed wines. With the huge focus on organic foods and what we all eat, there should be as much attention put on what we drink.
Statistical analysis
This study investigates the importance of alcohol as a migraine trigger factor, the prevalence of alcohol consumers and the mechanism of headache provocation. A MEDLINE search from 1988 to October 2007 was performed for “headache and alcohol”, “headache and wine”, “migraine and alcohol” and “migraine and wine”. In retrospective studies, about one-third of the migraine patients reported alcohol as a migraine trigger, at least occasionally, but only 10% of the migraine patients reported alcohol as a migraine trigger frequently. Regional differences were reported, perhaps depending in part on alcohol habits.
This will be helpful in guiding conversations with your doctor about your symptoms. You might have migraines and alcohol 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. Start your search with these complementary and integrative therapies. Then, consider exploring more treatment options with our other free resources.
If you suffer from migraines, talk with your doctor about how alcohol may affect you. Assessment of alcohol consumption is challenging, because the results are dependent on the patient’s honesty. Patients sometimes have a tendency not to admit their drinking habits 90. It has been proved that self-reported alcohol consumption by patients can be underestimated; therefore, more reliable methods such as toxicological hair analysis may help to provide stronger evidence 91.
A recall bias may be present regarding hangover symptomatology during the last year. Multivariate analysis by linear regression tested independent predictors for hangover symptoms (total HSS at last year and its sub-scales). For each test, P values less than 0.05 were considered as statistically significant unless stated otherwise. The demographic data, measure of alcoholic consumption, and smoking status of the participants were considered as the potential confounders. So, prevention of migraine episodes requires careful attention to and avoidance of potential triggers, potentially alongside preventive medications. Though drinking can temporarily blunt feelings of anxiety, this isn’t a suitable method to manage anxiety (or any mental health condition).
The American Migraine Foundation (AMF) suggests that alcohol as a trigger is more of a personal reaction — common in certain types of headaches — than a general effect. While alcohol hangover is a common disorder,10 causing suffering and disability to millions worldwide, there is no direct way to measure it. The HSS, which was used in this study, was developed to provide a useful hangover measure, assessing multiple symptom domains, which do not rely on respondents’ subjective definitions of hangover. Assessing the percentage of drinking occasions after which hangover symptoms allows the HSS item scores to be interpreted as hangover susceptibility or proneness.
Search terms of “alcohol,” “wine,” “food trigger,” “dietary trigger,” “migraine,” “headache” were used. Additional sources were identified via manual search of bibliographies, references lists, and previous peer reviews. Original studies were selected if they reported in the results a numeric percentage of headache patients referring any ADs as a trigger factor.