A lot of people who get migraines are referred to sleep specialists to try to determine the cause. It makes sense, as migraines and sleep have long been linked through both research and anecdotal evidence. But now a new study has found that fragmented sleep—that is, low sleep efficiency—creates a 39% higher risk of migraine two days later.
Studying sleep and migraines
A team of researchers in the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital asked 98 adults with an average age of 35 to wear wrist actigraphs and keep a diary of their sleep headaches and other health habits for 6 weeks.
After 6 weeks, the team found that the participants experienced a total of 870 migraines. Even after adjusting for other potential triggers, such as stress, caffeine, alcohol and exercise, the researchers found that fragmented sleep played a major role.
While the correlation itself wasn’t surprising, the timing was.
Both the actigraphy measures and the diary entries showed that there was a 39% higher risk of migraine TWO DAYS after the night of fragmented sleep. This is referred to as “day 1” and the day after fragmented sleep was referred to as “day 0.”
Sleep quantity and quality
Also surprising to some was that neither sleep quantity (6.5 or fewer hours each night) or quality correlated with migraines.
“Sleep is multidimensional and when we look at certain aspects, we found that low sleep efficiency, which is the amount of time you’re awake in bed when you’re trying to sleep, was associated with [migraines] not on the day immediately following, but on the day after that,” explains Dr. Suzanne Bertisch, a clinical investigator. “Further research is needed to understand the clinical and neurobiologic implications of sleep fragmentation and risk of migraine.”
