A throbbing headache, turning stomach, skin so sensitive that just wearing clothes hurts, and fluorescent lights that seem to stab your eyes: That’s how nearly 30 million Americans who suffer from migraines sometimes feel.
Experts say that three times as many women than men suffer from the sometimes-debilitating headaches. Recent research by the University of Virginia’s Jaideep Kapur, the Eugene Meyer III Professor of Neuroscience, and colleague Suchitra Joshi, associate professor of neurology at the UVA School of Medicine, shows that the gender imbalance could be related to menstruation.
“Migraines often occur around the menstrual cycle, during which reproductive hormones such as progesterone and estrogen rise and fall. The levels of both these hormones are low during the perimenstrual period,” the professors wrote in a recent article in The Conversation.
