Obesity Linked to Headaches in Children
A link between obesity and frequency of headaches in children and teens has been found in a new, multi-center study led by a neurologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
The more obese children and teens are, the greater the frequency and disabling nature of the headaches they get, according to the study, published online in Headache, the journal of the American Headache Society.
When obese and overweight children and teens lose weight, the frequency of headaches and the disability they produce improves, according to Andrew Hershey, MD, PhD, director of the Headache Center at Cincinnati Children’s, and lead author of the study.
The study, conducted at seven US pediatric headache centers and made possible by a grant from the American Headache Society, found that 34.1 percent of patients were either overweight (17.5 percent) or at risk of becoming overweight. That's similar to rates of overweight in the general child/teen population.
The researchers analyzed data collected on 913 patients at the start of the study, and again at three and six months, and found evidence of a link between weight and headaches.
"Among children who are overweight at their initial headache center visit, a change in their body mass index (BMI) was associated with a change in the frequency of their headaches over time," says Dr. Hershey. "While we can’t claim a causal link between obesity and headache, the association suggests some physiological or environmental processes that are common to both conditions."
Children that were overweight and lost weight had improvement in their headaches as compared with those that didn’t; the worst group being those that continued to increase their BMI.
The study is the first to examine the prevalence of obesity among children who have headaches.
