Do you suffer from headaches, and you’ve tried everything, but you can’t quite figure out what’s wrong? You may need more of this vitamin: vitamin D.
Vitamin D is often known as the sun vitamin, because you can get a good amount of your daily intake by getting sun exposure (with a good sunscreen of course).
Men who have lower levels of vitamin D may have an increased risk of frequent headaches, according to the new study from Finland.
The researchers analyzed information from about 2,600 Finnish men from ages 42 to 60 who gave blood samples and were surveyed about the frequency of their headaches. The men were originally part of a study on risk factors for heart disease.
Almost 70 percent of the men in the study had vitamin D levels below 20 nanograms per milliliter, which is generally considered the threshold for vitamin D deficiency. Lower vitamin D levels are a big cause for concern in Finland other regions that don’t get a lot of sun exposure.
The researchers found that men with frequent headaches, had vitamin D levels of 15.3 ng/ml (38.3 nmol/L), compared to 17.6 ng/ml (43.9 nmol/L) among those men without frequent headaches.
Men with the lowest vitamin D levels were about twice as likely to suffer from frequent headaches, compared to men with the highest vitamin D levels.
This is not the first study to link vitamin deficiencies to headaches or migraines.
According to research from Cincinnati’s Children’s Hospital Medical Center, a high percentage of children, teens, and young adults that suffer migraines have deficiencies in vitamin D, riboflavin, and coenzyme Q10.
“Further studies are needed to elucidate whether vitamin supplementation is effective in migraine patients in general, and whether patients with mild deficiency are more likely to benefit from supplementation,” says Suzanne Hagler, MD, a Headache Medicine fellow in the division of Neurology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and lead author of the study.
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REFERENCES:
1. “Low Vitamin D Linked to Frequent Headaches.” LiveScience. Purch, n.d. Web. 10 Jan. 2017.
2. “Low Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D Is Associated with Higher Risk of Frequent Headache in Middle-aged and Older Men.” Nature.com. Macmillan Publishers, n.d. Web. 10 Jan. 2017.
