Being poor is a real headache.
A new study finds a compelling link between migraines and financial instability. The study, presented at the European Society of Neuropsychopharmacology’s annual conference on Saturday, identified specific mutations in the CLOCK gene, a gene involved in sleep-wake cycles (also known as circadian rhythms), that make chronic stress-related migraines more likely.
The findings of the study of more than 2,000 people support the idea that stress can disrupt normal sleep and cause headaches, said Ksenia Gonda, an assistant professor of psychiatry and psychotherapy at Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary.
“This is crucial to going beyond anecdotal stories and understanding exactly how, at the genetic and biochemical level, different stressors, possibly through different pathways, disrupt function and trigger symptoms of different disorders like migraines,” Gonda says.
“Financial stress was used as a proxy because it’s a chronic stressor that puts a constant strain on people, unlike things like work deadlines,” Gonda said. But Gonda said it’s possible that “different types of stressors have different pathways,” although this has yet to be proven.
An estimated 39 million adults and children in the United States and 1 billion people worldwide suffer from migraines. Migraines can certainly cause sleep loss, hindering work performance (and therefore potential earnings). A study conducted by researchers at the American Headache Society found that people who experience 15 or more migraine attacks per month lose approximately 4.5 hours of work productivity each week.
In the study, Gonda and his colleagues, lead researcher Gabriela Juhasz of the University of Manchester and first author Daniel Baksa of Semmelweis University, evaluated 999 patients from Budapest and 1,350 patients from Manchester. The researchers looked specifically at two mutations in the CLOCK gene to determine whether they were associated with migraines. While the researchers did not find a consistent association between migraines and these genetic mutations alone, the impact of these specific mutations stood out when they added in the component of financial stress, measured by a self-report questionnaire. They found that these specific genetic mutations increased the odds of migraines by about 20% in subjects who suffered from financial difficulties.
Gonda explains that mutations in CLOCK affect the communication that tells genes how much of a certain protein to release. This protein is involved in circadian rhythm function in the body. The genetic mutations the researchers identified appear to inhibit this particular function. As a result, migraines may occur more frequently when we face chronic stress, the study suggests.
Gonda said the study doesn’t reveal what causes migraines, but it does show that migraine sufferers are likely to experience the condition as a result of both genetic and environmental factors. Migraine triggers vary from person to person and can include everything from hormones and lack of sleep to weather changes and food sensitivities. However, many migraine sufferers don’t know what causes their symptoms, so doctors often blame it on stress.
“We can’t always avoid stress, which is why we need to understand what pathways actually cause these disorders,” Gonda says.