In December 2008 the medical journal Cephalalgia published the results of a study by Dr Earl S. Ford and colleagues at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. They investigated an association between headache and body mass index.

Their analysis of 7,601 men and women 20 years of age or older found that being overweight or obese increased the likelihood of headache by 1.2 to nearly 1.4 times.

You can read more details about the study here.

The team apparently adjusted for other factors potentially associated with increased headache risk such as gender, ethnicity, smoking, alcohol use, physical activity, diabetes and cholesterol levels. However, a sufferer with poor blood sugar control and a bad diet could be pre-diabetic, so not adjusted for,  and thus affect the findings.

The researchers look forward to further studies to investigate “whether obesity is causally related to the development of headaches”, but in the meantime, weight management might be a useful approach in headache management.

What is interesting, but less commonly reported, is that an increased prevalence of headache may be associated with being underweight as well, but there weren’t enough underweight study participants for sound analysis.

Analysis of a migraine sufferer’s diet is one the first areas a nutritionist will consider.