Contents:
- Medical Video: IMPORTANT | Migraines and Sex: What you should know
- Can sex relieve migraines?
- Not everyone will recover from migraines by making love
Medical Video: IMPORTANT | Migraines and Sex: What you should know
Migraines are attacks of recurrent headaches followed by usually severe pain. Migraines often make you helpless and usually disrupt your activities, including during sex. However, the good news, sex can help you relieve migraines. Check out the reviews here.
Can sex relieve migraines?
One study reported that sex can relieve migraines for some people who have severe headaches. The study published in the journal Cephalalgia states that sexual activity can relieve pain due to migraines or cluster headaches. Some patients even report frequent sex to relieve headaches.
This study was conducted on 800 migraine patients and 200 cluster headache patients. The researcher distributed a questionnaire about the experiences of participants who had sex during an attack headache and how sex affected the intensity of pain.
The results showed that there were more than a third of patients who had sex during a headache. Two-thirds feel the pain is reduced.
As for patients with cluster headaches, 40% of people who have sex when an attack headache reports the pain has subsided. However, there are also those who say that sex can cause cluster headaches to get worse.
This is suspected because during sex, especially when reaching orgasm, endorphins are released from the brain. Endorphins are natural painkillers in the body. This endorphine kills migraine pain.
Dr. Alexander Mauskop of the New York Headache Center stated that endorphins are opiate-like chemicals, related to feelings of happiness, positivity, and storing pain signals to reach the brain. Unlike painkillers, which can take up to 15 minutes to relieve migraines, endorphins work instantly to relieve migraines before getting worse.
Not everyone will recover from migraines by making love
For some migraine patients, sex can actually trigger a migraine attack. Power released during sex puts pressure on the back and neck so that it can trigger migraines in people who are prone to headaches.
Dr. Green from Columbia says that headaches during sex are most commonly reported in people with migraines because they do have a genetic tendency to experience headaches. Sex can cause three different types of headaches, all of which can trigger migraines, namely explosive headaches, tension headaches, and positional headaches.
The type of headache that is most often triggered by sex is an explosive (explosive) headache, which occurs at the peak of orgasm with symptoms similar to brain hemorrhage. Tension headaches are usually caused by physical or emotional stress, including tension triggered by sex. However, this headache usually goes away in about 20 minutes.
Positional headaches include being difficult to diagnose. This headache is usually experienced by people who have just undergone spinal surgery or have epidural anesthesia. This is one of the procedures that can cause tears in the membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord, called dura, causing fluid to leak.
If you with a torn dura wake up from a lying position, losing fluid will cause the brain to relax, which will trigger a positional headache. If you lie down again, the spinal fluid will pool, protect the brain, and the headache will disappear.