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The Role Hormones Play In Migraines

Migraine affects more than 37 million people in the US, mostly young women who are of childbearing age, that is, 15 to 55, from puberty to menopause. As a result of these patterns, researchers have speculated that migraines might be linked to hormonal activity in women.

Periods

Most migraine sufferers are women, and many female migraine sufferers report getting migraines at certain times of the month, that is, around the time they have their period. Scientists have linked this to a decrease in the hormone estrogen during menstruation.

Pills

Some women who use birth control pills report more migraines, and more severe migraines, than those who don’t. Other women begin to take the pill to try to reduce the symptoms of their migraines. The birth control pill uses various hormones, including estrogen, to regulate a woman’s ability to conceive a child.

Pregnancy

Some women report that the migraines change when they are pregnant, which is another point in time when women’s hormones such as estrogen can fluctuate.

Perimenopause

Some women report more migraines during perimenopause and menopause. The prefix peri- means ‘around’. Women can be perimenopausal that is, nearing the time of menopause, as early as their 30s. Most women will experience full menopause in their early 50s.

Perimenopause is a time of decreasing hormonal activity, especially estrogen. Menopause is defined as not having any periods for 1 calendar year.

Perimenopause can cause a range of hormonal changes. Periods might become less frequent and less regular. They might become more frequent, with fewer or greater than 28 days per cycle. Women might notice a smaller amount of bleeding, or a great deal more than usual on 1 or all 5 days. These are all signs of changing hormone levels, which might increase the frequency and severity of migraines.

When a woman reaches menopause, her hormonal activity, especially estrogen, radically decreases, which can lead to more migraines. Some women choose hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in order to deal with the more troublesome symptoms of menopause, including hot flashes, night sweats and loss of sexual desire.

HRT can also relieve migraine, but like the pill, can also lead to increased risk of blood clots and stroke.

HRT was recommended extensively in the 1990s to relieve menopausal symptoms and protect heart and bone health. However, extensive research has shown that HRT is not protective at all and can increase a woman’s risk of various hormonally related cancers, such as ovarian cancer.

Phytoestrogens

Soy is a plant which is high in protein and substances known as phytoestrogens, which seem to mimic estrogen women produce naturally. Phytoestrogens have been linked to fewer menopausal symptoms and therefore might be helpful or migraine.

Hormones in the food supply

The food industry is the US is drive by profit-motives, not health-related ones. Many cattle are pumped full of hormones, steroids and antibiotics in order to get as much yield out of the animal as possible. Cow milk with hormone in it is of particular concern. Some studies show girls are starting to menstruate at even younger ages than the usual lower range of 11 and some boys have experienced ‘feminization’, such as the development of breast tissues, if they tend to drink a lot of dairy milk.

Whenever possible, aim for organic foods and consider using milk substitutes such as soy and nut milks for adults.

Food cravings

Hormonal fluctuations are often accompanied by food cravings. Some women will crave salty foods, which can trigger migraines. Others might crave sweets, and go for sugar-free products because they are weight conscious. The artificial sweetener aspartame (NutraSweet) has been linked with migraine.

The stress and a lack of sleep many women experience around the time of their periods can also lead to migraine. Master stress management techniques and see what a difference they can make to your migraines.

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Pay Special Attention to Your Feet as a Diabetic

Diabetics experience a wide range of problems associated with the disease all over their body, but some parts of the body are more severely affected than others. Namely, the feet are a major source of danger for almost all diabetics, both type 1 and 2.

One of the more common foot-based afflictions associated with diabetes is what’s known as neuropathy. Neuropathy is the damaging of the nerves, and while this happens all over your body, it seems to affect the feet of diabetics worse than it does other parts of the body.

When your feet and legs are hit with neuropathy, a wide variety of problems arise. First, you might lose feeling in your feet. This might not sound all that serious at first, apart from being an inconvenience, but it’s very serious.

If you sustain any injuries to your feet and aren’t able to feel it, they can get infected and become very hard to treat if you don’t notice it. Due to this potential nerve damage, it’s important that diabetics check on their feet frequently to make sure there are no unnoticed cuts, scrapes, or punctures, because these can all lead to nasty wounds when infected.

Even if these wounds are noticed, another danger lurks with diabetes, which is significantly slower wound healing. Due to the high levels of sugar in the blood, your body doesn’t have the same kind of blood flow that it would in a non-diabetic, which makes wounds heal slower.

This means that even if you catch a cut in time, you have to keep it clean and make sure it doesn’t get infected, because it will take some time for that cut to go away. You should also keep track of anything like blisters, sores, or anything that can cause the inside of your foot to be exposed.

Make sure you take good care of your feet by cleaning them regularly, to avoid any chance of infection. Also be sure to get a good, comfortable pair of shoes. Poorly fitted shoes or shoes that are in bad condition can easily lead to blisters, and if you wear the same shoes a lot, be sure to wash them every now and then so they’re not cultivating bacteria.

If at any point you get a severe cut or one that isn’t healing properly, immediately contact your doctor so they can help you out. They have experience helping wounds heal faster and in a more sanitary environment.

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What Can I Eat as a Diabetic?

After being diagnosed with diabetes, the first thing you’re more likely instructed on is what you can and can’t eat. So much stress is placed on what you can’t eat, and if you had a diet mostly consisting of those food items, you’d be left a bit lost on what’s left for you to eat.

For diabetics, the best rule of thumb is to stay away from foods that are heavily processed and sugar-heavy. This much is fairly common knowledge, especially among the diabetic community.

This means you shouldn’t load up on things like cereal, fries, sweets, white bread, soda, and more. For many people, though, some of these items are major parts of their diets, unhealthy as they may be.

This makes getting used to diabetes really difficult for those people, because on top of the new lifestyle changes of exercise and keeping track of blood sugar levels, they now have to completely change their eating habits.

Foods that are safe for diabetics aren’t as hard to come by as they may seem at first. One great option is certain fruits and vegetables. These two food groups have a ton of variety, so you’re sure to find at least one thing that you like among them.

However, be sure you’re getting the right kinds of fruits and veggies. You want your fruits and vegetables to be fresh, ideally. This doesn’t mean that they have to have been picked within the last 24 hours, but just don’t get anything canned or processed with heavy syrup.

Also, don’t assume that things are okay for diabetics just because they contain fruit. Things like fruit punch, juice, and jellies are all very poor choices for a diabetic because they contain high levels of sugar.

The other food group that will be your main source of food as a diabetic will be grains. Many of us are already familiar with this category in the form of foods like rice, bread, and more.

Much like fruit, not all grains are healthy for diabetics. Try to stay away from white, or processed, grains. You instead want products that are whole grain, like brown rice, whole grain bread, and oatmeal.

These two food groups alone give you a pretty decent selection of options to work with. In the morning, you might be able to have oatmeal with berries for breakfast. In the afternoon, you could have a sandwich made from whole wheat bread, some meat, and some vegetables, and in the evening for dinner, some brown rice and vegetables.

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Understanding a Diabetes Diagnosis

Diabetes is a very difficult thing to deal with when you first get diagnosed with it. It may seem unfair, it may seem like too much, and it can all just seem very confusing. The best thing you can do is take a deep breath, understand what you’re dealing with, and then take the first steps towards addressing the condition.

Technically speaking, diabetes is a medical issue in which your blood sugar levels are too high due to a lack of insulin. Insulin is a hormone that breaks down sugar in your blood and distributes the molecules to cells that use it for energy.

Without insulin, the sugar in your blood won’t be properly broken down, and can lead to some severe complications if it’s not taken care of. In the case of the less common type 1 diabetes, typically discovered at a young age, your body’s immune system fails to recognize the parts of your pancreas that produce insulin as a part of you, and attack it.

This renders your body unable to produce insulin from that point forward, and this damage is permanent. Type 2 diabetes is a bit different. Type 2 diabetics can produce insulin just fine, but their bodies just don’t use it as they should, rendering their existing insulin less effective.

This form of diabetes usually develops much later in life than type 1, and is also far more common. This can cause damage to your body in a variety of ways. The excess sugar in your blood can damage the walls of blood vessels as it flows through your body, leading to nerve damage, loss of eyesight, and even increased risk of infections.

Typically, you’ll end up having to administer artificial insulin to yourself, while also keeping track of your glucose levels and meals. This sounds like an ordeal, and it first, it may feel that way.

However, there are many diabetics and doctors out there who have designed meal plans and provided people with means of easily keeping track of their blood sugar levels.

The best way to respond to a diabetes diagnosis is to get in the right mindset about it. It may be permanent, and it may be a huge hassle in terms of learning how to handle it, but there’s nothing you can do about that. What you can do instead is mitigate the effects of diabetes and make sure you live a longer, happier life by keeping the disease in check.

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Top Risk Factors for a Diabetes Diagnosis

Diabetes isn’t simply a random occurrence or something that you can just catch from strangers like other diseases. There are typically other risk factors involved that you need to watch out for that may lead to being diagnosed with diabetes.

The risk factors differ slightly between the two types of diabetes, since type 1 can’t be prevented but type 2 can. In both types, family history is extremely important. If one of your parents or siblings has diabetes, you’re immediately at much greater risk, since it’s somewhat hereditary.

Another very important factor is your weight. While this is more important with type 2 diabetes, it still applies to both to some extent. You can greatly decrease your chance of getting type 2 diabetes by keeping your weight at a normal level and not allowing obesity to creep in.

Activity levels are important, too. People who are more active experience fewer cases of diabetes diagnosis than those who live a more sedentary lifestyle. This may be because exercise allows your body to utilize the blood sugar more effectively.

Ethnicity is another risk factor in the development of diabetes. Certain ethnicities are more likely to get a diagnosis – including Hispanics, Paicific Islanders, American Indians, Asian and African Americans.

Age is another important risk factor. As you grow older, your risk for developing the disease rises. Those over the age of 45 begin seeing their blood sugar numbers rise, often leading to a type 2 diabetes diagnosis.

If you had gestational diabetes while you were pregnant, or delivered a baby weighing more than nine pounds, then the chances of you developing full blown diabetes after you give birth are also increased. It may not happen instantly, but down the road it could have an impact.

Other medical conditions – such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol or triglycerides, or PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) can also be contributors to type 2 diabetes.

Other health concerns – primarily heart disease or having had a stroke previously – can also mean you’re headed for a diabetes diagnosis in your near future. So having an overall plan of attack for better health is important.

Even your mental health plays a vital role in staving off diabetes. Stress hormones can contribute to your body’s inability to properly use insulin, so if you’re depressed or experience chronic stress or anxiety, you’re setting yourself up for a diabetes diagnosis.

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Stress is a Serious Contributor to Diabetes

One of the most serious and common issues that diabetics face isn’t an issue concerning bodily damage or anything strictly physical, but rather something mental: stress.

Stress is something that people all around the world, both diabetics and non-diabetics, struggle with fairly often. For diabetics, stress affects them a bit differently on a technical level.

When your body’s stress hormones are activated, they cause your body to begin producing extra hormones and stocking up on glucose. In nature, this was helpful for us so that we could be prepared to fight or run in the event of an attack by another human or by an animal.

However, these days, stress is caused by less urgent things, and is a lot less helpful. The increased storage of glucose can mean serious trouble for diabetics, who can’t process it correctly - or at all.

Therefore, it’s very important that diabetics manage their stress to the best of their ability. Aside from normal stress of day to day life, there are other parts of diabetes that can bring on excess stress that you might not even notice.

It’s very important that you’re able to identify your issues, come up with solutions, and solve your issues. One of the major sources of stress for diabetics is the sheer amount of extra steps and thought that you have to put into everything you do.

Every meal you eat has to be planned, you have to keep track of your blood sugar levels, you have to administer insulin, you have to keep in touch with your doctors, and more.

All of this can really start to pile up on you, especially if you’re new to diabetes and have only recently been diagnosed. One of the best tips for dealing with it is to use your available resources.

You don’t have to deal with diabetes all by yourself - nobody wants to. Get in touch with one of many organizations around the world whose purpose is specifically to help diabetics.

They can help you design meal plans, recommend doctors, remind you to keep track of your glucose levels, and more. Don’t be afraid to use them. You should also try a few common stress relieving tips.

One is to stop stressing about things you can’t change, and this applies very well to diabetes. Many people get all stressed out and worried about being diagnosed with diabetes, but there’s nothing they can do to change the diagnosis – the control lies in developing a new lifestyle and embracing it.