 Hello guys, this is Dr. Ahmed Ergin. I'm an endocrinologist and a diabetes and metabolism specialist. Today we are going to talk about headaches. Now, does diabetes cause headaches or any other hormones involved in the headaches? We'll talk about that today. If you have questions about that, stay tuned because we are getting started right now. Alright guys, so basically everybody has some sort of headaches, right? It could be tension headaches, migraine headaches, cluster headaches and actually these are the common ones but there's actually more than 100 types of different headaches. But the common things are common, right? So if you have diabetes and you're getting headaches and you're wondering does it have anything to do with your diabetes and especially if you did not have these headaches and now you're having them, the question is is diabetes, does diabetes have anything to do with them, right? Interesting study found that nothing against women but I don't know why they studied women in this study only but they found that overweight insulin resistant women had much more headaches than same age, same features in other women who are not overweight or who did not have insulin resistance. They could not explain the mechanism behind insulin resistance and headache association but there is more than likely an association that is to do with inflammation. So let's review how the headaches happen at the first place. The most headaches happen due to activation, dilation or construction of the blood vessels. The migraines are a typical example of that. So if you are having something that could be a food, that could be stress, that could be hormonal changes or even glucose changes that can trigger a dilation and expansion of your artery or a construction of your artery or vein can trigger a migraine headache. So that's the most common one. Some headaches happen due to the tenseness in the muscles and that can show itself as a headache. What are the basic things that happen in diabetes? High blood sugars and sometimes low blood sugars depending on what medication you are taking. Let's jump to diabetes and how diabetes can really cause the headaches. So think about this, when you have high blood sugar and the high blood sugar symptoms are as you can imagine going to the bathroom too often, getting dehydrated and if you develop ketoacidosis even worse, you can develop abdominal pain, shortness of breath and so forth. But the most commonly people start urinating a lot, they may not feel overall well but what happens when your blood sugars are really high is the dehydration. That's why you know we say drink water not that the water reduces your blood sugar but it prevents the dehydration. So when you become dehydrated your body needs to maintain the blood pressure that you have that you are living with. Now when that happens you know like you can imagine to maintain the blood pressure if the volume is less in your artery then you have to construct that artery so that you can maintain the pressure in the system. And as you can imagine from the first thing we talked about how the arteries and veins and how their dimension changes the trigger of a headache definitely dehydration will for that reason trigger a headache. Now that's the most common reason for high blood sugar. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that everybody with high blood sugar will have a headache but that is one of the symptoms to consider and check your blood sugar. Now another thing of course the most commonly is low blood sugar. Now your low blood sugar symptoms are typically excessive sweating, heart racing, feeling in a panic mood, feeling weak overall feeling dizzy but headaches can also happen especially if your blood sugar is dropping slowly. You may not necessarily feel it or if you're having frequent low blood sugars your body may not show all those reactions that I showed you because your body is like oh well I'm used to this but you know the arteries and veins will always do what they need to do. Now what happens also when you go low your body develops a stress reaction that's why you develop this stress symptoms such as anxiety, excessive sweating, heart racing. These are happening because your body triggers a hormone called adrenaline right or norepinephrine epinephrine and norepinephrine we call them and cortisol also kicks in. So when these things happen you know as you can imagine if you know a little knowledge about this hormones norepinephrine is the primary hormone that activates the sympathetic nervous system, constricts your blood vessels, increases your heart rate and so forth. So as a result you may have a headache due to this stress hormones kicking in. Another problem that happens a lot and we talk about intermittent fasting a lot and people talk about headaches when they fast right the primary discouraging factor against intermittent fasting. Now while that happens again you know when you're in a fasting state your body actually is in a stress. They're gonna be like well why am I fasting then why am I putting myself to stress? Well the studies show that actually intermittent stress is good for your body but chronic stress is not good. So creating a little inflammation acutely is good but having an inflammation all the time. It's like your mother-in-law coming and visiting you for you know for a day or two that's great it's fun but when they stay over for like two weeks and you're like uh when are they leaving you know same thing for your body you know anything is fun you know for a while and you prepare yourself you know it's a little change your body gets ready for the stress for the next time so you get stronger but if you are constantly doing it then you're gonna be drained and you're gonna be exhausted and your body will fail. So that's why intermittent fasting is good and that's why we don't recommend fasting for 30 days we recommend fasting for 20 hours break the fast do a regular day and then fast again which gives you the best results but when you first start intermittent fasting and your body is not used to it your body will give a stress reaction especially in the beginning more than the other times and the stress hormones as you can remember the cortisol epinephrine same thing that happens when you go low your body may trigger these hormones and these hormones will affect your arteries and veins as we discussed that can also trigger a headache again that doesn't necessarily mean that every headache is bad for you but sometimes it's a sign that something bad can be happening you just need to judge so if you're fasting and then your blood sugars are okay overall like they're like in the you know 80s 90s or even higher and you're you know you're not necessarily having any sugar problem then think about this maybe that intermittent fasting you just implemented this causing the headache which hopefully will go away in time because just like anything when you start exercising first your body starts aching a lot and then you keep doing it and you ache less and less every time so similarly the headaches will dissipate but if you're having you know dehydration symptoms you're urinating a lot and you're having a headache make sure that you check your blood sugar make sure that you bring it down fast again we have videos about how to bring the blood sugar down fast you can click the link below we have videos about how to correct low blood sugars and last thing guys if you're on certain medications definitely can trigger a headache from my standpoint i see headaches not super common but some people will report headaches if they are on glp1 class such as ozampic, trelocity, victosa, bairian, biata these are the medications occasionally will trigger a headache because you have some glp1 receptors in the arteries and veins which is good actually which is believed by many people that that's the mechanism that these drugs actually can reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes but on the other hand especially when you're new to the drug sometimes it triggers a headache as we discuss anything that touches your arteries and veins if the your arteries and veins have a receptor for it then that means that you know if your arteries and veins are interacting with that new hormone then you may have a headache you're gonna remember glp1 is a hormone we use it frequently to treat diabetes because it's not insulin it tells your body to make insulin so that's why it's the great way of treating diabetes it's not a medical advice if you have a headache and it's none of these things you still need to make sure that if it is not going away you talk to your doctor or you go to ER if it is too bad for a headache look at our channel we have more than 130 videos right now and actually as of right now we are early 2021 if you are watching this video in 2022 we'll probably have a couple hundred videos so it's all about diabetes and insulin resistance and weight loss make sure you educate yourself it's your life it's your body it's always good to know before you rush to the emergency room for a headache or medicating yourself excessively so i hope this video helps you thank you for watching we'll see you next time