Given the high prevalence of cigarette smoking worldwide, and its link to several forms of cancers / malignant diseases, this is vital to understand. The link between cigarette smoking and migraine, the cigarette smoking-alcohol-migraine nexus, and the basic sciences involved have never been studied systematically or in-depth.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6770-5916
17-August-2023
First of all, These few lines below are personal experience and not built on scientific basis. I am a migraine patient since being a child (hemicranial headache relieved with vomiting and previously ergot drugs). I used to smoke after age of 28 and there were a great link between my smoking and my migraine. I stopped smoking in 2018 and the overall incidence of migraine decreased (with other life style modification). Again, this note is given by the simple me as patient and not by an anesthesiologist.
Real-life experience and informal data are equally if not more important than RCCTs.
If other life-style modifications involve giving up alcohol imbibition, caffeine ingestion, and reduced psychosocial stress perception, like with job or marriage or rearing children, it is important to note.
Stress is the commonest trigger for migraine.
Then there is ageing. Migraine subsides with advancing age, as the novelty stress wears off.
Migraine also subsides with advancing atherosclerosis.
Hence, giving up smoking cigarettes is a complex physiological change. The number of cigarettes smoked also matters. The duration between a smoke and headache onset is critical.
Migraine patients are very very perceptive, much more than their own doctors or scientists buried in clinical trials.
Thank you for your valuable input.
Antimigraine action of nicotine: theoretical basis and potential clinical application
Gupta, Vinod Kumar
European Journal of Emergency Medicine 14(4):p 243-244, August 2007. | DOI: 10.1097/MEJ.0b013e32816679fe
Smokers (of cigarettes) must contribute to this discussion.
Personal experience is greatly undervalued.
RCCTs cannot help in the evolution of understanding of this facet of migraine.
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