A U.S. study finds that obesity in children, as it is in adults, is associated with more frequent and more severe headaches.
Dr. Andrew Hershey, a pediatric neurologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, said obese children who get headaches are more likely to be disabled and miss school.
Hershey presented the research at the annual meeting of the American Headache Society, CBS News reported.
The association between obesity and migraines does not mean that being severely overweight causes the headaches, Hershey said.
The researchers tracked 366 children who sought treatment for headaches and found that 21.5 percent were overweight, compared to 15 percent of the general population. More than 90 percent of the children had migraines.
The question of whether the obesity directly leads to the headache is not solved, Hershey said.
He suggested that cause and effect might go the other way — that children with severe frequent headaches are less likely to exercise and thus more likely to be overweight.
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