• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Air Travel Could Be Linked To Headaches

Posted on: Thursday, 28 August 2008, 14:55 CDT

Researchers in Israel estimate that more than 100 million people suffer from flight-associated headaches each year.

Their study consisted of 906 men and women who traveled more than once by plane. Six percent of those participants reported that they had suffered from headaches as a result of flying.

With an estimated 3.3 billion seats available on commercial flights each year, Dr. Israel Potasman and colleagues at Bnai Zion Medical Center in Haifa suggest that more than 100 million people have flight-associated headaches annually.

"This finding has enormous impact both in terms of suffering and economics," they write in the medical journal Cephalalgia.

Researchers added that contributing factors to these headaches include stress, poor air quality, engine noise and changes in barometric pressure.

More than one in five of the study’s participants had headaches at least once a month that weren’t related to flying while over half of the 5.7 percent who reported flight-associated headaches suffered headaches this frequently.

These participants were found to be slightly more likely to have migraines, and two-thirds of those who suffered flight-associated headaches were women, and one-third had a family history of headache, researchers said.

Just over 19 percent said they had headaches every time they traveled by air.

Barometric pressure may be the primary culprit, as researchers found nearly a quarter of participants said their headaches got worse as the plane climbed, while a fifth said the pain became worse as the plane descended to the Dead Sea, which is about 400 meters below sea level.

The average age of the study participants, who had gone to the clinic to be vaccinated before traveling to the tropics, was 33, the researchers note, so "we may have missed many older business travelers flying to Europe or the USA." The vast majority of those surveyed (97 percent) said they flew economy class.

This study, the researchers conclude, suggests that flight-associated headache "seems to affect a significant number of the travel population."

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

More News in this Category