Alcohol labels should warn of cancer risk, says new WHO Europe report

12 Ago Alcohol labels should warn of cancer risk, says new WHO Europe report

Don’t blame yourself if you wake up with a migraine attack or a hangover headache. It’s not always what you drank the night before that triggered that morning migraine. While some research suggests they may contribute to attacks, other studies indicate that certain flavonoid fractions might actually have protective effects. Studies suggest that females with migraine may indeed be more susceptible to alcohol-induced attacks. Higher alcohol content generally increases the risk of triggering a migraine.

Useful Drinking Habits for People with Migraines

It also includes binge drinking — a pattern of drinking where a male has five or more drinks within two hours or a female has at least four drinks within two hours. Alcohol use disorder is a pattern of alcohol use that involves problems controlling your drinking, being preoccupied with alcohol or continuing to use alcohol even when it causes problems. This disorder also involves having to drink more to get the same effect or having withdrawal symptoms when you rapidly decrease or stop drinking.

When to avoid alcohol

Using data from daily diaries and actigraphs, a trained technician blinded to daily headache information used a standardised protocol 12 to identify daily sleep and wake times and calculate sleep duration. In the evening diary, we included two scales of psychological stress. They also completed seven questions from the Daytime Insomnia Symptom Scale 14.

• Drinking moderately if you’re otherwise healthy may be a risk you’re willing to take.
• Finally, it’s important to know the difference between alcohol headaches – also known as hangovers – and migraine.
• However, the only guaranteed way to avoid alcohol-induced migraines is to abstain from drinking altogether.
• Research shows that alcohol is among the most frequently and consistently mentioned triggers for migraine,, but not everyone responds to them the same way.
• Therefore, patients with primary headache need to determine for themselves the association between alcohol and headache without any myths and influences.
• The majority of cohort studies were within the range of 3–7 points, thus receiving a high risk of bias 52, 55, 58.

Criteria to recognize habits for alcohol consumption was various in almost each study. Some of them assessed the drinking by daily alcohol intake 44, 45, 47, 48, 55, 58, 59, 62, part of them measured drinking within one week 44, 47, 51, 53, 60, 61 or month 36, 44, 47, 49, 51. Additionally, there were cases 56, 57 where division was based on never, current or past drinking. More accurate calculation with amount and various types of alcohol was also conducted in studies 26, 27, 45, 54.

The triggering effect of chocolate on migraine alcohol induced migraine has been a subject of debate, with several studies presenting varying perspectives. Three provocative studies specifically comparing the impact of chocolate with a placebo failed to identify a significant outcome 65,66,67. Moreover, some viewpoints propose that the association between chocolate and migraine might be attributed to food craving, serving as a premonitory symptom rather than a direct trigger for headaches 68.

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.

Factors affecting alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harm

After more analysis of the research, that doesn’t seem to be the case. In general, a healthy diet and physical activity have much greater health benefits than alcohol and have been more extensively studied. Alcohol as an intoxicant affects a wide range of structures and processes in the central nervous system and increases the risk for intentional and unintentional injuries and adverse social consequences. Alcohol has considerable toxic effects on the digestive and cardiovascular systems. Alcoholic beverages are classified as carcinogenic by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and increase the risk of several cancer types.

• MWP and BB was involved in the conception and visualization of the study.
• For instance, red wine has been described as a dominant trigger of migraines and cluster headaches due to its high levels of tannins and congeners.
• Analysis of the 22 included studies revealed 5 cohort studies 36, 45, 52, 55, 58, 11 cross-sectional 26, 27, 44, 46,47,48, 51, 56, 57, 59, 60 and six case-controls 49, 50, 53, 54, 61, 62.
• After a year of dietary adjustments, the group with dietary modifications showed lower Visual Analog Scale (VAS) scores compared to the medication-only group.
• However, caffeine also has therapeutic potential for headache relief.
• Individual sensitivity to specific components of alcoholic drinks likely plays a role in triggering migraine attacks.

Other Alcoholic Beverages as Triggers

Alcohol use disorder includes a level of drinking that’s sometimes called alcoholism. The majority of studies have primarily focused on whether a singular dietary pattern can ameliorate headaches. The following are several prevalent dietary modifications (Figure 2).

These include inflammatory mediators (e.g., IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, and TNF-α), the gut microbiota composition, monoamines (e.g., serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine), stress hormones, and nutritional elements 101. CGRP is a neuropeptide with diverse physiological functions, contributing to increased nitric oxide synthesis, vasodilation, release of inflammatory mediators from mast cells, and sensitization of trigeminal nerves 64. These roles make CGRP a crucial factor in the pathophysiology of migraine. In recent years, the success of CGRP-based therapeutics, including monoclonal antibodies targeting CGRP or its receptor, has introduced a new class of drugs specifically designed for migraine prevention 92. Migraines and their triggers are very individual – what affects one person may cause no problems for the next. Many migraine sufferers find that keeping a diary helps them identify their own personal triggers and understand their patterns of migraines better.

Risks of moderate alcohol use

One of the six case–control studies was assessed as having a high risk of bias 49, two a low risk of bias 50, 62 and three a moderate bias risk 53, 54, 61. Red wine can also cause a rise in the level of a type of brain chemical called serotonin (5-HT) in the blood.8 This has been linked to migraine headaches, though once again, the relationship is poorly understood. 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.

Minimize Your Migraine Risk as Best as Possible When Drinking

Information on the gender of participants was unavailable for analysis. So, the question of who is drinking more with a primary headache is still to be addressed. Additionally, only a few of the studies divided participants into migraine with and without aura. Therefore, there was insufficient data to analyze the relationship between alcohol and aura, and the data that does exist is inconsistent 65, 86. As mentioned in the discussion above, alcohol consumption assessment is strongly based on patients’ honesty. If there is misleading data in questionnaires or during medical interviews, their overall subsequent analysis is also distorted.

A heavy drinking binge may even cause a life-threatening coma or death. This is of particular concern when you’re taking certain medications that also depress the brain’s function. Many people with alcohol use disorder hesitate to get treatment because they don’t recognize that they have a problem. An intervention from loved ones can help some people recognize and accept that they need professional help. If you’re concerned about someone who drinks too much, ask a professional experienced in alcohol treatment for advice on how to approach that person. In general, multiple factors have been implicated in the interplay between the gut–brain axis and migraine.