Waking Up to Headaches
By Christine Haran
Getting out of bed can be agony if you’re not a morning person, and it’s even more challenging if you have a headache. Now imagine waking up with a headache virtually every single morning for four years. According to a recent study, about 1 in 13 people suffer from chronic morning headaches.
In the study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, approximately 7.6 percent of the 18,980 Europeans who participated in a phone questionnaire reported that they had experienced chronic morning headache for about four years. Rates were high among women and people between the ages of 45 and 64.
Chronic morning headaches are usually associated with sleep disorders such as sleep apnea, in which people stop breathing many times throughout the night, teeth grinding and periodic limb movements. And the bed partners of snorers are known to wake with a headache. But the study found that the headaches were most strongly linked to anxiety and depression.
"What we discovered was that chronic morning headache was not only a manifestation of sleep apnea." said lead study author Maurice M. Ohayon, MD, PhD, the director of the Stanford Sleep Epidemiology Research Center. "This will affect the debate about chronic morning headache in terms of treatment."
Although depression and anxiety were the most commonly associated conditions, the researchers did find links to sleep disorders such as insomnia and sleep apnea. Chronic morning headache was also common among people with hypertension, musculoskeletal diseases, and those who took anti-anxiety drugs or had more than six alcoholic drinks a day.
"People with chronic morning headache must see a physician to be evaluated for anxiety and depression and other diseases." Dr. Ohayon said. "And physicians must think of depression and anxiety when they see people with this complaint. Many studies show that antidepressants will have an impact, so people no longer have to suffer from morning headaches."
