Don’t tell your children about your migraine

(You could make them get one too)

PARENTS who suffer from migraines should not tell their children about them, an expert has claimed, or they could make them ill.

Psychologically, parents who complain of bad headaches can pass on the symptoms by putting the idea into their children’s heads, professor of neurology Dimos Mitsikostas said.

Youngsters then ‘replicate’ behaviours, such as a sensitivity to light and needing to lie down in a dark room. While many children who get migraines like their parents fall victim to their genes, Professor Mitsikostas believes some do because of suggestion.

It works similarly to the placebo effect, where sugar pills given to patients told they are medicine make them better because of that belief.

The ‘nocebo’ effect identified in youngsters works in reverse, because they believe the negative effects of their parents’ headaches and take them on.

Professor Mitsikostas, president of the European Headache Federation, was speaking after giving a presentation at an international migraine congress in Glasgow yesterday.

He said: ‘Genes are transferred, and also behaviours are transferred. Boys and girls replicate parents’ behaviour. It would be better to avoid showing that they are in a painful condition because children, they will replicate that exactly.’

Asked for his advice, he said parents had a responsibility to be positive and should avoid giving a negative example by complaining of migraine pain.

The nocebo effect causes physical effects in people who have an expectation of falling ill.

A study on high-altitude headaches, which took people 1,100ft above sea level, found 86 per cent of those told they would suffer a headache had one – compared to 52 per cent of those told nothing. This was proven by medical tests showing raised levels of stress hormone cortisol and fatty acids released during headaches.

Studies on children are limited because of ethical considerations, but up to one in five children under the age of 12 whose parents suffer migraines have them too, and experts believe there is a ‘huge’ nocebo effect. Children are thought to be more susceptible to suggestion about ill health than adults, making them more likely to develop symptoms they are told about.

Some studies suggest women are also more susceptible to the nocebo effect, raising their likelihood of developing side effects from medication such as weight gain when they are told about them by a doctor.

Professor Mitsikostas, from the University of Athens, said: ‘We have to direct patients, explain what nocebo means. It is not related to hysteria or things like that. Our brain is a very, very complex organ.’

Research presented at the conference showed people can become ill, even when the possibility is not suggested to them by a doctor.

In the high altitude test, only one person was told they would develop a headache so high above sea level, but it was enough to make more people ill when the information spread.

The conference at Glasgow’s SECC heard that headaches and migraines are the third highest cause of disability worldwide, measured in years of life lost to incapacitation.

Around six million Britons suffer migraines – more than the combined number with diabetes, ashtma and epilepsy, costing 25million working days a year.

‘Behaviours are transferred’