For those who suffer from them, migraines can be an extremely painful and debilitating condition, and should not be considered as merely bad headaches! Unlike headaches, migraines can cause a range of distressing symptoms in people, such as flashing-lights, cognitive-disorientation, blind-spots and tingling of the hands and face. These symptoms are often experienced prior to the migraine-headache itself and are known as migraine with aura.
According to studies recently conducted in the US, women who experience migraine with aura are at an increased risk of heart-attack, and those taking newer forms of contraceptives may be at greater risk of suffering from blood-clots. The study examined two aspects of migraine with aura, its relationship with critical cardiovascular-episodes, such as heart-disease and stroke, and the link between migraines, blood-clots and contraceptive-use.
The first study investigated data from the Women’s Health Study and focused on research in which 27,860 participated – with 1,435 having previously been affected by migraine with aura. During the fifteen years of follow-ups that resulted, 1,030 incidents of stroke, heart attack or death from other heart-ailments was recorded. As the findings were analysed, a team of experts considered the variety of risk-factors that may be at play within the sample, and the team concluded that following high-blood pressure, migraine with aura represented the second strongest contributor to the risk of heart-attack and stroke.
The second study used a sample of 145,204 women who used contraceptives in order to investigate their risk of experiencing blood-clots. Within the sample – 2,691 were affected by migraine with aura, and 4,437 were affected by migraine without aura. Those affected by migraine with aura were also found to have a more significant chance of experiencing serious blood-clots issues such as deep-vein thrombosis – which helps to emphasise the potentially hazardous impact that migraines can have on health and wellbeing.
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