Eating habits, personality, mood, and headache: how eating disorders can relate to migraine?

Elisa de Paula França Resende, neurologista, Hospital das Clínicas UFMG-EBSERH, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil.

Is there a relationship between migraine and eating disorders? Those two conditions were found to be associated in the study “Can personality traits, obesity, depression, anxiety, and quality of life explain the association between migraine and disordered eating attitudes?” from Turkish researchers published at Arquivos de Neuropsiquiatria (vol.78, no.9). Furthermore, people who suffered from episodic migraine and had eating disorders had a higher prevalence of obesity, anxiety, and depression. They also had more severe migraine episodes, poorer quality of life, and were more prone to have neuroticism, a personality trait in which the person experiences the world as distressing, threatening, and unsafe.Researchers from Bozok University Medical School, Turkey, compared persons with migraine with healthy controls.

First, they found that persons with migraine had a higher prevalence of eating disorders, more anxiety and depression symptoms, and a higher prevalence of neuroticism.  People affected by this disorder also had a poorer quality of life. Then, they split the migraine group into two: with and without eating disorders based on the Eating Attitudes Test. What they discovered was: people with migraine that also had an eating disorder had more severe pain with a higher impact on their quality of life. They also were more obese, had more anxiety, depression and a higher prevalence of neuroticism.

Image: Vinicius “amnx” Amano.

The association between migraine and eating disorders might be related to serotonin dysfunction, a condition that is common to both disorders. The discovery that persons with migraine and concomitant eating disorders have more anxiety and depression corroborates its possibility, according to the researchers.

Migraine is a complex disease that affects millions of people with a high impact on the quality of life (2). In a regular neurological consultation for migraine, it is uncommon to ask patients about eating habits and personality traits. This study shows the importance of looking for those comorbidities during the medical visit. The results open a new window of possibilities in migraine management, focusing on behavioral therapy targeting eating and personality disorders.

Image: Elisa de Paulo França Resende.

References

FEIGIN, V. L. et al.  Global, regional, and national burden of neurological disorders, 1990-2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016. The Lancet. Neurology [online]. 2019, vol. 18, no. 05, pp. 459–480 [viewed 25 November 2020]. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(18)30499-X. Available from: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(18)30499-X/fulltext

To read the article, acess

HAMAMCI, M. et al. Can personality traits, obesity, depression, anxiety, and quality of life explain the association between migraine and disordered eating attitudes? Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria [online]. 2020, vol. 78, no. 09, ISSN 1678-4227 [viewed 25 November 2020]. https://doi.org/10.1590/0004-282×20200046. Available from: http://ref.scielo.org/9362bc

External links

Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria – ANP: www.scielo.br/anp