The Relationship Between Sleep & Migraine

…and other items from this week’s health science news:

Which way does the relationship go, really?

Sleep problems have been reported by 64.1% of people with migraine, compared with 38.7% of people without headaches and 45.4% of those with tension-type headaches.

The latter difference suggests that there maybe something more at hand here than just “well you can’t sleep if you’re suffering”.

Notably, people with migraine had worse scores across all assessed sleep dimensions, including time needed to fall asleep, sleep duration and efficiency, nighttime awakenings, and daytime functioning, even after adjustment for demographic and employment factors.

This association thus probably runs both ways: insufficient and excessive sleep can increase susceptibility to pain, while migraine attacks and accompanying symptoms can make it harder to fall asleep and can cause nighttime awakenings.

This is reasonable, as sleep and migraine involve overlapping neurobiological mechanisms, including the hypothalamus and neurotransmitters involved in circadian rhythms and pain perception.

Read in full: Migraine and sleep are strongly interconnected, study finds

Related: Migraine Mythbusting

Menopause has more to say about dementia risk

Researchers (Dr. Madeline Alexander et al.) have identified 16 blood molecules linked to brain aging whose levels changed during the menopause transition, providing biological evidence of brain-related changes during untreated menopause.

Specifically, levels of the 16 molecules were more closely associated with hormone levels than with age, suggesting that hormonal changes during menopause contributed to the molecular shifts; inflammation-related molecules tended to increase as estradiol decreased, while molecules associated with Alzheimer’s biology increased as FSH increased.

Nor was this a fluke; the findings were replicated using previously collected data from more than 2,800 women in the UK Biobank;

Read in full: Menopause leaves a fingerprint that may predict dementia risk

Related: Alzheimer’s Sex Differences May Not Be What They Appear

Stay strong!

Age-related muscle loss (sarcopenia) affects nearly half of adults over the age of 80, and can take away the strength needed for everyday activities and independence.

However, it may be partially a matter of strength loss even without muscle loss, as it’s now been discovered that aging causes the communication point between nerves and muscles to become less effective, challenging the assumption that this nerve-muscle connection remains reliable with age.

Per a recent study (cited below),

• There’s a technical problem: the decline in neuromuscular communication was associated with reduced levels of NaV1.4, a protein involved in transmitting nerve signals to muscle fibers.
• And also a technical solution: partially inhibiting ClC-1 (another protein involved) made aging muscles more responsive to nerve signals and improved muscle strength in an animal model, suggesting that the communication problem may be partly reversible.

So, there may be more approaches at hand then just diet and exercise—though of course it’s still very important to tend to those things too!

Read in full: Discovery could help older adults maintain muscle strength

Related: Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)

Take care!