Head Pain After Drinking? How to Avoid Alcohol Headaches

Alcohol has different effects on your body depending on when you drink it. These are called immediate and delayed alcohol-induced headaches. Alcohol may increase blood flow to certain parts of your brain. But whether this causes or relieves headache symptoms depends largely on the type of headache. The review also suggests that having migraine leads people to avoid alcohol, rather than alcohol having any protective role against migraine. The number of drinks you have, what you’re drinking, and what’s going on in your life may be the primary culprits rather than alcohol itself.

It’s not unusual for someone to wake up after a night of drinking feeling social embarrassment and regret. Some of the main effects of alcohol intoxication involve disinhibition, increased impulsivity (loss of self-control), and behaviors focusing on current thoughts, feelings, or emotions without regard for social norms. Neither the interaction term nor the presence of migraine on day‐2 were significant and they were removed (one at a time) from the final model (Model 2). No convergence issues were identified in Model 3 (neither in the full nor in the simplified, final model).

Those diagnosed with a specific type of headache may be more prone to develop a specific type of headache after consuming alcohol. In a 2017 study, researchers found that people of East Asian ancestry drink less than members of other groups. Certain genes may influence the tendency to drink and alcohol tolerance to quantities of alcohol.

This leads to excessive urination and dehydration, which may cause a headache after a small amount of alcohol. This article will use the terms “male,” “female,” or both to refer to sex assigned at birth. The study and editorial appeared in the November/December 2022 issue of Headache.

Is Alcohol a Migraine Trigger?

As you work with your doctor on next steps, it will be important to maintain access to reliable resources on migraine. We recommend a look at our patient guides, which include useful information including how to talk to your doctor about migraine. Receiving a formal migraine diagnosis is the first milestone when working with your doctor to identify a personalized and effective treatment plan. Continuing to talk with your doctor throughout the course of your treatment is important for determining the strategies that prove beneficial and those that may not be as effective. It’s important to work with your obstetrician and your headache doctor when you have migraine to establish a safe treatment plan.

Even a modest amount of alcohol can cause people with migraine to develop a delayed headache or trigger an attack. The short answer is that while it’s possible for alcohol to cause a migraine attack, it’s often a bit more complicated. In some studies, about one-third of people living with migraine reported alcohol as a migraine trigger (at least occasionally). In these retrospective studies, only 10% reported a frequent link. Alcohol’s exact role in triggering a migraine isn’t fully known.

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The final sample size was 487 individuals, who collectively contributed data on 43,830 diary days, of which 9578 were migraine days and 5913 were the first days of a migraine attack.
To summarize, for people with migraine, the best alcoholic choices are clear liquors like vodka, gin, or dry white wine.
The fact that few headache patients cannot tolerate some alcoholic drinks does not justify the consideration that alcohol is a major trigger and the suggestion of abstinence.
Make sure to avoid hydrating drinks that are heavy in sugar, as either low blood sugar or high blood sugar can make a hangover headache worse.

ways to curb your drinking

You can find additional support from people in your position and those who have already experienced pregnancy with migraine in our Move Against Migraine Facebook group. The content on this website is provided for educational purposes only. While it is doctor-verified, it is not intended to serve as medical advice, and users are advised to seek the advice of their doctors before making any decisions based on the information in this article. People can talk with their doctors about possible methods to prevent or ease alcohol-induced headaches. Other criteria for a person to have a migraine diagnosis include nausea or vomiting and sensitivity to light or noise.

Because anxiety can trigger or worsen headaches, these two hangover symptoms are often related. Congeners are minor compounds that occur in alcoholic beverages as a natural result of distilling and fermenting. Congeners are primarily found in darker liquors like brandy, whiskey, and wine. There are exceptions to this rule, however, such as tequila—a light-colored liquor that nevertheless carries high levels of congeners.

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But she was cautiously optimistic about how the current results might change how people think about the relationship between the two. Alcohol impacts your intestines’ ability to absorb certain nutrients, leading to shortfalls in zinc, selenium, potassium, iron, and magnesium. Poor or limited sleep causes grogginess and irritability, which can lead to feelings of depression or anxiety. Although alcohol makes you fall asleep faster, it interrupts your natural sleep-wake cycle (or circadian rhythm). Alcohol dramatically impacts the quality and quantity of rest you get, further contributing to hangover symptoms. Ethanol is also a diuretic, meaning it increases urination, which then leads to electrolyte loss and dehydration.

Links to NCBI Databases

Of course, like all medications, they have their own side effects.
These are substances that the alcohol manufacturing process produces.
No content on this site, regardless of date, should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.
There are also behavioral treatment options and lifestyle changes that can help.

Additionally, patients and physicians should consider the latest medical data, in order to avoid the myths about alcohol consumption and primary headaches. Whereas the World Health Organization (WHO) states that there is no safe alcohol dose 19, Panconesi et al. conclude that low consumption is not a contraindication for headache patients 79. However, each patient makes individual decisions based on their own experience. Headache after a certain amount of alcohol is likely to induce behavioral reactions (i.e., alcohol-intake adjustment).

You may try avoiding those drinks in the future to prevent migraine attacks. Due to the inclusion of many study designs, the risk of bias was evaluated using tools adjusted to the type of study. The Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) critical appraisal tools were used for cross-sectional, cohort and case control studies 63. According to the appropriate JBI checklist, cross-sectional studies had to be conducted on the basis of eight questions, case-controls had ten questions, while cohort studies contained 11 questions. Possible answers were “Yes”, “No”, “Unclear” or “Not applicable”. If a cross-sectional study received seven or more positive answers, a case–control eight and a cohort study nine, migraines from alcohol ten or 11, their assessments were described as having a low risk of bias.

For instance, alcohol byproducts called congeners have been linked to headaches. Dark-colored alcohols like red wine, brandy, and whiskey may contain more of them. Many of the same tips for preventing a headache after drinking also work for treating one.

Availability of data and materials

As a physician, my best advice for decreasing or avoiding alcohol-related headaches is to take steps to change your relationship with alcohol. Monument is an online alcohol treatment platform that can help provide support every step of the way. You can get peer support, and explore treatment options like therapy and medication to stop drinking.

Anytime a person with migraine starts a new medication, it’s important you ask a doctor, neurologist, or pharmacist how the medication might interact with alcohol. If you aren’t sure whether your medication is compatible with alcohol, it’s best — always — to avoid drinking until you have more information. Many people have experienced a headache after drinking alcohol — especially after drinking too much. After creating and using search terms in databases, the results were searched by three authors (BB, PN and MS1) independently. Then, the results were compared by researchers and duplicates were removed.

Individuals gave consent to their anonymized data being collected and analyzed for research purposes by agreeing to the Curelator Inc. Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.27 The Biomedical Research Alliance of New York (BRANY) IRB granted full waiver from informed consent on 10 October 2019. At the time of the study the App was only available in English. No content on this site, regardless of date, should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.

Risk of bias

Those who are triggered by alcohol usually feel the attack coming on within a few hours, although some reported that the next day was when they felt it. Regardless of the percentage of people affected, it is clear that the effects of alcohol can result in migraine episodes for some people. Talk with your doctor about how long after drinking alcohol to wait before you can take any prescription migraine or OTC medications. Another thing that remains unclear is if the quantity and type of alcohol you drink determines whether you will get a migraine headache. Seven articles used International Headache Society (IHS) criteria from 1988 46, 47, 50, 51, 56, 59, 60.

People who get hangovers that trigger a migraine may also wish to avoid alcohol with high levels of congeners. These are substances that the alcohol manufacturing process produces. Some research suggests that congeners play a role in hangovers, although factors such as inflammation also contribute. Alcohol increases urination, which can lead to dehydration, and people who drink alcohol may not drink as much water, intensifying the water loss. It may also trigger headaches related to headache disorders, such as migraine. These headaches cause very intense pain that often primarily affects the area behind one eye.