Vitamin D and migraine

At the biennial International Headache Congress held last week in Dublin a group of Italian researchers presented a paper, Relationship between severity of migraine and vitamin D deficiency: a case-control study.

They examined 3 groups of subjects: 116 patients with chronic migraine, 44 patients with episodic migraine, and 100 non-headache controls. Ninety-two migraine patients had vitamin D insufficiency (borderline low levels), whereas 40 had a clear vitamin D deficiency. They found a strong inverse correlation between vitamin D levels and the severity of attacks as well as migraine-related disability.

This is only a correlational study, meaning that it does not prove that taking vitamin D will help relieve migraines. However, several neurological disorders seem to be associated with low vitamin D levels, suggesting that vitamin D is very important for the normal functioning of the nervous system. So it makes sense to keep your vitamin D levels at least in the middle of normal range.