Nov 08
25
The Migraine/Breast Cancer Connection
There have been so many studies done on breast cancer to this day that it’s hard to keep track of some of the more seemingly random ones that link breast cancer to a certain medication, an event, a lifestyle, a type of food consumed, weight, diet, and the list goes one and on. This one is very interesting though, and I always find myself wondering how they make the connection when they do make strange, seemingly unrelated connections like this.
This newest study is one on breast cancer as it is related to migraine headaches. Migraines are very serious headaches that range in symptoms from dizziness to vertigo to throwing up and seeing things like spots and bright colors. Women seem to be much more prone to developing migraines than men do for some reason, so the thought is that estrogen or other female dervied hormones may be partly to explain the discrepancy between the sexes. But I digress.
The basic principal of the latest finding is that women who have migraine headaches normally have a much lower incidence rate of breast cancer. Go figure! The finding is significant because women who have migraine headaches as a normal occurrence in their lives tend to have about a thirty percent less risk of developing breast cancer than women who have never had migraine headaches.Â
In what seems like unrelated events, researchers are now looking for ways that this new information can help them develop preventive breast cancer measures, care and guidelines, and may even help in the development of better treatments for those that already have the disease.Â
They are looking at the fact that breast cancer is usually correlated with estrogen levels that are consistently too high in women, while women who suffer from migraines typically have chronically low levels of the female hormone. This may explain why women who are prone to getting migraines have less incidence of breast cancer, and they are further testing this theory.
