Scientists Say Female Migraine Sufferers Are Less Likely To Develop Diabetes

Anyone who suffers from migraines will tell you they aren't even on the same planet as a regular headache.

Alongside the obvious pain, symptoms can include fuzzy vision, dizziness and vomiting. In short, they suck, but there might be one small saving grace for suffers. According to a new study, women who get the chronic headaches are less likely to get type two diabetes.

The study published in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) found that there was "a lower risk of developing type two diabetes for women with active migraine" and "a decrease in active migraine prevalence prior to diabetes diagnosis."

In simple terms, they found that ladies who have migraines are less likely to get disease, and proving the link, ladies who were diagnosed with diabetes got fewer migraines before their diagnosis.

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Type two diabetes is a disease that causes the sugar levels in the blood to become too high due to the body's insulin, and it's often (but not exclusively) linked to being inactive or overweight, or having a family with a history of the disease.

For the study, the team looked at data that was collected in 1990 from 98,995 French women born between 1925 and 1950.

They then looked at the women who had also completed a follow-up questionnaire on migraines in 2002, of which 76,403 remained. Of these women, 2156 were excluded because they had type two diabetes.

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The remaining 74,247 women, who had a mean age of 61 and were all diabetes-free, were put through a 10-year follow up. After ten years, the scientists found 2373 cases of type two diabetes had occured but the data observed a lower risk of type two diabetes for women with migraines compared with women with no migraine history.

The also found a linear decrease in migraine prevalence (from 22 per cent to 11 per cent) during the 24 years prior to the diabetes diagnosis of the women who developed the disease.

Despite these findings on migraines and type two diabetes, the researchers still can't quite work out why the two effect one another, and suggest this as a good point for further research.

So there you have it: if you get bad migraines now, you're potentially far less likely to get type two diabetes later.

Topics: Science, health news

Ciara Sheppard

Ciara is a freelance journalist working for Tyla. After graduating from the University of Sussex, Ciara worked as a writer at GLAMOUR Magazine and later as the Assistant Editor of Yahoo Style UK.

@ciarasheppard