It's all about the serotonin:
In a relatively small study, 68 young men and women were surveyed about recent headaches and sexual desire.
Migraine sufferers reported levels of sexual desire 20 percent higher than those suffering from tension headaches.
Overall, men in the study reported levels of sexual desire that were 24 percent higher than women. But women with migraines had levels of sexual desire similar to men with mere tension headaches.
...
Sexual desire and migraine headache have both previously been linked to levels of serotonin, a brain chemical that also plays a role in depression. An excess of serotonin may be associated with decreased libido, and migraine sufferers are reported to have low levels of the chemical, Houle and his colleagues note.
Because high levels of serotonin are associated with low sexual desire, and migraine sufferers have low levels of the chemical, it was predicted that they would report higher levels of sex drive.
That is just weak. You finally find a woman with a large sex drive, and she has headaches and depression all the time.
Actually, I think that the migraine may be a secondary effect of the serotonin deficit. If I remember correctly, serotonin is a vasoconstrictor of blood vessels in the skull. Because of the lack of serotonin this vessels dilate, causing the pain of the migraine. Serotonin in the brain is working more like a mood elevator. I have heard people who study depression analogize it to mood volume control.
It is just interesting to me that the deficit in serotonin might be systemic like this. You would think the problem would be much more localized.
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So now we know that the "I have a headache" excuse is total bullshit! :D
Thank you for arming me with that secret knowledge. Can I conclude that sex cures headaches? Or would sex promote headaches considering that your sex drive would decrease after sex possibly raising seratonin?
OTOH, if I remember correctly, elevated seratonin caused by SSRIs can trigger or exacerbate mania in bipolar patients, and mania is associated with increased sex drive, so it's probably not as simple a relationship as the article suggests.
I would not be at all surprised to learn of a similar association with bipolar disorder.
I have hard anecdotal evidence that chicks with migraine and bipolar disorder are pretty wild when not floored by migraine or a bipolar low spell. I don't know if that averages out above or below the standard randiness level. More research is called for.
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