Migraines for a long time Headaches are closely linked to nature. Along with stress and hormones, changing weather conditions are one of the most common triggers for headaches. “Patients often say they can predict the weather,” says Vincent Martin, director of the Headache and Facial Pain Center at the University of Cincinnati and president of the American Headache Foundation. The onset of a migraine can signal a drop in air pressure, which may predict rainfall a few days in advance.
Martin has studied the effects of temperature and other weather conditions on migraines, and believes the climate crisis, which brings rising temperatures and more extreme weather, could make migraines worse. “I think it will have a huge impact on migraines,” he says.
This summer, Martin and his colleagues published a study that reviewed more than 70,000 diary entries from 660 migraine sufferers and cross-referenced them with local weather data, including wind speed, temperature, humidity, and air pressure. The researchers found that for every 10-degree Fahrenheit increase in daily temperature, headache occurrence increased by 6 percent. One reason heat may trigger migraines is the loss of fluid and electrolytes through sweat, Martin says. It’s also possible that the sun acts as a photostimuli, and its bright light can trigger migraines.
Other studies have similarly found a link between rising temperatures and migraines. A 2015 study looked at emergency room admissions for migraines at a Turkish hospital over a year and compared them with various weather parameters, including temperature, humidity, and air pressure. They found that rising temperatures and decreasing humidity were associated with an increase in the number of migraine sufferers.
Fred Cohen, an assistant professor of medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and a co-author of the study with Martin, worries that climate change could have a direct impact on the burden of migraines. Cohen led another review published earlier this year that uncovered a peculiar trend: While migraine prevalence (i.e., the number of people who suffer from migraines) has remained roughly the same in the United States over the past 30 years, the review found, migraine-related disability, defined as how much time patients lose from work or socializing due to migraines, has skyrocketed.
Cohen and his coauthors found that the number of people reporting migraine-related disability has nearly doubled across several measures. That could be because doctors are getting better at diagnosing migraines, or because people are more aware of their symptoms and more comfortable discussing them. But Cohen says it could also be because “something else is going on.” One explanation the study authors suggest is a change in the environment.
Rising temperatures aren’t the only thing migraine sufferers should worry about. Climate change has been linked to increases in air pollutants caused by wildfires, which are also known to trigger migraines. While the mechanism by which pollution triggers migraines is still unclear, studies have found that short-term exposure to air pollutants is associated with a spike in migraine-specific emergency room visits. In fact, when intense wildfires raged on the east coast of North America last summer, “we saw a surge in calls to headache centers,” says Cohen.
