Lifestyle, including a diet high in sugar, can cause headaches. Experts explain why they occur.
Nine out of ten Spaniards suffer from some type of headache, according to the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN). Many reasons can trigger a migraine, but some headaches can be caused by lifestyle factors.
Alcoholic beverages, especially red wine, poor postures, stress, skipping meals, sleep disorders, and certain foods, such as processed meats containing nitrates and simple carbohydrates, can cause headaches.
In this sense, some people suffer from headaches after eating foods rich in sugar or simple or refined carbohydrates, such as a slice of chocolate cake. What is the relationship?
Eating sugar causes headaches. Why?
Do you eat something sweet and immediately get a headache? Don’t worry, this type of headache is more common than you think and there is a reason: the reason is the high sugar or refined carbohydrate content that a slice of chocolate cake, for example, may have.
Many people believe that eating sugar causes headaches, but this is not the case. Foods with sugar and refined carbohydrates do not cause migraines, but rather the opposite.
Although it may seem strange, a headache makes you want to eat something sweet. How can this be explained? At the moment you feel the craving for sugary food, you don’t yet feel the discomfort in your head, but it is already there.
The thing is that headaches have several stages and you only notice the annoying symptoms when the migraine activates the hypothalamus: a region of the brain that participates in the control of food intake; it includes the centers of hunger and satiety.
In short, the craving for something sweet or salty originates in the hypothalamus, the same place where headaches originate, and sometimes the desire to eat something delicious is activated just before a migraine.
Do blood sugar spikes also cause headaches?
Too much sugar and headaches go hand in hand. Eating too much sugar, which is a simple carbohydrate, causes blood glucose spikes , sending blood sugar levels soaring and falling that they trigger headaches .
To explain it better, eating sugar suddenly increases the level of glucose in the blood , but if the insulin hormone does not work correctly in the body, it is not possible to carry out the appropriate processes to use glucose and convert it into energy.
This results in high blood glucose levels , which can lead to a variety of problems, including dizziness and headaches.
