Smart Phones and Your Migraine Medication

Is your smart phone making your medication less effective?

Well, it’s hard to be sure, but a recent study is raising some questions about how smart phone use is changing our migraine attacks.

It’s quite likely that you’ve been spending more time than normal in front of a screen. (That’s why our tip about investing in Iris for your computer may be one of the most important tips of the year!) So researchers are interested in how that is affecting our health in general.

This study was done before the COVID-19 lockdowns, but the findings are interesting. Patients with primary headache disorders were divided into groups – those using smart phones, and those not using smart phones.

The good news was that patients using smart phones did not seem to have drastically worse headache symptoms than those not using smart phones. That doesn’t mean that smart phone usage didn’t trigger attacks, or make things worse. In this case, researchers were looking for patients who had a two-fold increase in severity or intensity of symptoms. So there was nothing that noteworthy going on.

However, the interesting thing about the study was that patients with smart phones did use more drugs – that is, abortive drugs – drugs taken to stop a specific headache/migraine attack. Smart phone users took more abortive drugs, and those drugs seemed to be less effective.

As I said early on, it’s difficult to draw conclusions from a study like this. There are going to be various differences between people who use smart phones and people who don’t (for example, smart phone users currently tend to be younger). Not too many people want to change their phone habits for a few months just to be a part of a study. So usually we have to measure in other ways (for example, frequency of phone use, etc).

And studies like this may be telling us things that we already believe – maybe the smart phone isn’t a sign of the fall of civilization, but surely such a drastic change in human behaviour is going to have an impact.

So we need to keep talking about how to minimize the any bad health effects of smart phones and screens. Use programs like Iris, and the programs on your phone that may help cut blue light at night. Consider blue light blocking glasses when you’re using the computer. Try talking on the phone, rather than always doing video calls (believe it or not, this has been a trend in the last few weeks!). Watch your phone time, and look for alternatives if you find you’re using it lot.

What have you found to help you when it comes to smart phones and screen time in general? Have you done anything that has helped cut down on headache symptoms?

For more on this study, read this summary article: Smartphone Use Linked to Increased Acute Headache Medication Requirement. The study abstract can be found here: Smartphone use and primary headache: A cross-sectional hospital-based study