UHAM055

38 * UNDERSTANDING HEADACHES AND M IG RAI N ES

Stress, food, drink and light are aLL common causes of migraine.

or the things missing from our diet, disordered sleep, stress, noise, lighting, environmental pollution, overwork, and a myriad of other factors.

Common causes

Hangover

In some societies, arguably, most headaches occur as a result of ‘the night before’. Drinking alcohol in large amounts poisons the body, and the result, for most people, is a headache the next day. Binge drinkers are especially prone to this, butmoderate drinkers (a glass of winę with a meal each day, for instance) rarely experience a hangover. The headache that is felt from a hangover is due to inflammation of the meninges, a membranę covering the brain. The brain itself is not sore, sińce that is not possible, but the sac of skin surrounding it has lots of nerve cells that can respond to poisoning. The best way to avoid a hangover is by not drinking alcohol to excess, but if you do then drink large ąuantities of water before going to sleep. Take your time drinking the water, however, sińce gobbling down three pints of water and going straight to sleep is not advisable. The best advice is to drink water along with the alcohol, volume-for-volume. So, for every glass of winę you drink, have a glass of water. This will also help you to moderate your consumption of alcohol as you will find it morę difficult to drink twice the amount of fluid! Bear in mind that it really should be water that you drink, not cola, coffee, etc., sińce these may contain caffeine that will encourage you to urinate morę. The alcohol will have the same effect, and so you will slowly lose fluid over the course of a night.