Sleep and Migraines: Impact, and 8 Tips For Healthy Sleep

Sleep and Migraines

Migraines and sleep are allied with each other, where lack of sleep leads to migraine, and migraine creates hinder adequate sleep.

A study revealed that MH is more common in females than men and higher in rural living people than in urban areas people.

Getting an MH may bring anger, severe pain, frustration, and irritability, which may also occur in a normal headache.

A 2016 study revealed that migraine is the second most common cause of brain disorders and the second common cause of disability.

Migraine headaches can occur due to several reasons here are some common reasons which include:

• Genetics or family history
• second-hand smoking
• excessive eating and fasting
• stress
• bright or flickering light
• sleep deprivation
• more screen time
• specific smell

There are several other reasons for MH, and everyone has different migraine causes, so first find your reason, then work on them.

Check – Best Yoga Asanas To Minimize Headache To a Great Extent

On the other hand, sleep is essential for overall health or for preparing the body for new challenges.

Lack of sleep causes several health issues are:

• Stress (may worsen the situation)
• affect thinking power
• fatigue or feel low energy
• chronic insufficient sleep leads to the weakening of the immune system
• increased risk of weight gain or low weight
• mood swings
• difficulty in judgement and making a decision
• increase the risk of chronic diseases like thyroid, diabetes, and heart diseases
• more chance of depression, and other mental issues
• slow alertness and performance

A study believed that an average adult should sleep for 7 to 8 hours. but excessive sleep is not healthy at all.

The study shows that excessive sleeping also causes frequent migraine attacks in the morning.

In addition, research reveals that long sleep duration is a key factor for sleep apnea, which is allied with higher mortality (1).

It is important to understand that everyone has different headaches and sleep reasons, and trigger things, so consult your healthcare.

Impact of Migraines on Sleep

Frequent migraine pain disturbs your sleep at night, which leads to insufficient sleep, and in the long term it worse your situation.

Here is how can migraine impact your sleep.

• Sleep disturbance: As we know that migraine can trigger at any time, even at night, which may create hinder your sleep.
• Insomnia: It is a common sleep disorder, where a person hard to fall asleep, and migraine worse the condition.
• Sleep quality: Of course, migraine leads to poor sleep quality by waking you frequently.
• Disorder: once it becomes chronic, then it is also allied with other sleep disorders like insomnia, sleep apnea, etc.

A report on headache patients shows that headache occurs about 75% during sleep or immediately after waking up (6)

Overall, lack of sleep can increase the chance of migraine pain, while migraine can disturb sleep, which makes both situations worse.

Impact of Sleep on Migraines Pain

Both migraine and deprivation are allied, like stress and sleep, where stress hard to fall asleep, In turn, sleep deprivation worsens stress.

But you can easily decrease the chance of migraine attack or pain, by just taking a quality of sleep.

A study on the Arctic population tells us that taking adequate sleep was a protective key against frequent migraine pain (6)

• Difficult in recovery: Insufficient slumber not only triggers migraine again and again but also create hinder other body recoveries.
• Trigger migraine: late sleep, screen time before sleep, changes in sleep pattern, and poor sleep position can trigger pain.
• Increase duration: Lack of sleep or poor sleep habits can increase the frequency, severity, and duration of migraine headaches.
• Sleep a tool: Several studies reveal that the quality of sleep reduces the chance of migraine attacks.

A study on rats showed that sleep deprivation lead to death were test animals within 2 to 3 weeks experiment.

Seek help if you experience both issues or both affect your quality of life, doctor will help you by giving prescribed therapy or medicine.

8 Tips for Healthy Sleep

There are many ways to get better sleep if you have a migraine including:

• maintain sleep hygiene through these ways are
  • avoid caffeine
  • drink plenty of water daytime, but decrease 2 hours before bedtime
  • avoid alcohol
  • try to go to bed at the same time every night
  • avoid screen time before bed
  • use dim light, because bright light affects melatonin (a sleep hormone)
  • avoid heavy, oily, and spicy food
  • take a warm bath, which stimulates the sleep hormone
  • the bedroom should be ideal for cool, and dark
• Try relaxation techniques like yoga, and meditation
• make yourself comfortable during sleep by adding pillows
• doing exercise at least 30 minutes daily
• maintain a healthy lifestyle, like avoiding excessive doing, whether it is food, sleep, exercise, etc.
• take proper sunlight, which will regulate your sleep pattern
• avoid sleeping at late night, which interferes with your sleep rhythm.

If you have restless Legs, the syndrome has your physician evaluate you for folic acid or iron deficiency.

Sleep on a soft mattress, with several soft pillows, which you can place side your stomach to lift your stomach.

Here are some additional tips that help your better sleep are:

1. If you have a chronic sleep disorder, then consult your doctor
2. make sure the room should be cool, good smell and is dark (7)
3. use a white noise machine (a device that continuously produces a soothing sound that promotes relaxation and sleep.
4. if you wake up in the middle of the night, then do something like exercise, until you sleep tired.
5. avoid naps in the afternoon, especially in the evening, which makes falling asleep harder.

The most common sleep disorder in migraine patients is – insomnia, parasomnia daytime sleep, and sleep apnea (7) (8)

If you want to know how to prevent migraine for healthy sleep, check the tips on healthy quality of sleep headline.

Remember, everyone has different reasons, so find your reasons, and work on them, it will help in health and quality of sleep.

Down Line

Migraine is not dangerous, however, it occurs that it may affect your quality of life if precautions are not taken on time.

Sleep and migraine are allied with each other, where sleep deprivation triggers migraine, In turn, migraine leads to a lack of sleep.

There are several ways to avoid migraine pain, one of them is adequate sleep, which decreases the risk of pain.

Avoid late night wake, bedroom environment should be cool, and dark, avoid screen before bedtime which affects sleep rhythm, etc.