Alternative medicine (2)
- Chiropractic adjustment
- Biofeedback: Using your mind to improve your health
Lifestyle and home remedies (3)
- Migraines: Simple steps to head off the pain
- Tension-type headaches: Self-care measures for relief
- Headaches: Reduce stress to prevent the pain
Risk factors (1)
- Stress symptoms: Effects on your body, feelings and behavior
Treatments and drugs (1)
- Headaches: Treatment depends on your diagnosis and symptoms
Free
E-newsletter
Subscribe to Housecall
Our weekly general interest
e-newsletter keeps you up to date
on a wide variety of health topics.
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
continued:
Headaches and hormones: What's the connection?
During pregnancy
Estrogen levels rise rapidly in early pregnancy and remain high throughout pregnancy. Migraines often improve or even disappear during pregnancy. However, tension headaches usually won't improve as they aren't affected by hormone changes.
After delivery, an abrupt decrease in estrogen levels — along with stress, irregular eating habits and lack of sleep — may trigger headaches again.
If you experience headaches, discuss with your doctor before you become pregnant medications or other therapies that may help you during your pregnancy. Many headache medications may have harmful or unknown effects on a developing baby.
Although you'll need to be cautious about which headache medications you take while you're breast-feeding, you'll likely have more options than you did during pregnancy. Your doctor can tell you which medications you may take while you're breast-feeding.
During perimenopause and menopause
For many women who have had headaches related to hormone changes, migraines may become more frequent and severe during perimenopause — the years leading up to menopause — because hormone levels rise and fall unevenly. This fluctuation can trigger migraines.
For some women, migraines improve once their menstrual periods cease — but tension headaches often get worse. If your headaches persist after menopause, you often can continue to take your medications and use other therapies.
Hormone replacement therapy may worsen headaches in some women, improve headaches in others or cause no changes. If you're taking hormone replacement therapy, your doctor may recommend an estrogen skin patch. The patch provides a low, steady supply of estrogen, which is least likely to aggravate headaches.
If hormone replacement therapy worsens your headaches, your doctor may lower the estrogen dose, change to a different form of estrogen or stop the hormone replacement therapy.
Every woman is unique
Some women are more sensitive to the effects of hormones. If headaches are disrupting your daily activities, work or personal life, ask your doctor for help.
Previous page(2 of 2)
- Brandes JL. Migraine in women. Continuum. 2012;18:835.
- Migraine fact sheet. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health. http://womenshealth.gov/publications/our-publications/fact-sheet/migraine.cfm. Accessed Sept. 13, 2012.
- Calhoun AH. Estrogen-associated migraine. http://www.uptodate.com/index. Accessed Sept. 14, 2012.
- Lee M, et al. Headache in pregnancy. http://www.uptodate.com/index. Accessed Sept. 7, 2012.
- Kaunitz AM. Hormonal contraception for suppression of menstruation. http://www.uptodate.com/index. Accessed Sept. 20, 2012.
Find Mayo Clinic on