It s also a stroke risk factor remote from the headache. It just increases the chance that you could have a stroke even if you re not in the middle of your migraine headache removed from the time that you re actually having the headache. She compared migraine to high blood pressure, diabetes, and cholesterol in the sense that all are conditions that increase the risk of a stroke. The good news for women is that stroke risk appears to be related to the estrogen content of the oral contraceptive pills. The older contraceptive pills that were higher doses of greater than 50 or 100 micrograms, look like there was a risk of stroke with those.
Many questions remain about what to recommend for women migraine patients.
One of them is smoking, and one of them is oral contraceptive pill use I have been recommending recently that they find a different contraceptive measure rather than using estrogen-containing pills. While the added risk of stroke for oral contraceptive users with migraine is not extremely high, Dr. Tietjen says it may be higher than one would want for younger women. Any question regarding a medical diagnosis, treatment, referral, drug availability or pricing should be directed to either a licensed physician or to the product's manufacturer. All rights reserved.