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WHO HAS HEADACHES AND M I G RAI N ES? ^ 21

evidence of heredity, but there is by no means a perfect relationship between headaches and genetics. If you have no history of migraine in the family it does not mean that you will not experience migraines; it is simply less likely. If both your parents have migraines, you may not have them at present, but it is highly probable that you will suffer them eventually. This can be due to a number of reasons. If your migraines are of the allergic type, then you might have inherited a gene that makes you allergic to the same thing as one or both of your parents. But it is often difhcult to work out what we can blame on genetic inheritance and what we can blame on upbringing. Psychologists have spent decades debating the so-called naturę-nurture hypothesis. Not everything is due to genes. Sometimes, we learn things from our parents, regardless of genes. Stress, which is heavily involved in all types of headache, is something we cannot avoid because the world is fuli of things that can stress us. Some people cope very well with stress, and life’s problems seem to be ‘like water off a duck’s back’ to them. Other people do not have those coping skills, and are strongly affected by certain events. Coping skills are something that we teach our children, even when we are not trying. Children often emulate us and pick up tips and hints. They learn how to behave from us. If they see us responding badly to stress, they can learn to respond badly too. Children can therefore pick up their parents’ habits, and if poor coping leads to greater stress and greater stress leads to headaches in the parents, it is ąuite likely that a similar pattern will be observed in the children when they grow up.

Race and culture

There is no current evidence to suggest that different ‘races’ of people have different types of headache, although there could easily be differences between people based on their culture. Coping styles can differ across cultures, types of stress experiences can vary and, most obvious of all, eating habits differ. As a simple example, Chinese food can be high in monosodium glutamate (MSG), a Chemical which, it has been claimed, can lead to headaches. Irrespective of whether you are ethnic Chinese or not, eating a lot of Chinese food could contribute to a greater incidence of headaches. We are currently in a position where cross-cultural studies of headaches have seldom been conducted and published, and so we can only guess at the differences between people based upon such things. What does seem to hołd true, however, concerns the freąuency of headaches in different, very broad, racial groups. Quite simply, white people seem to get morę headaches. Headaches are less common in