OF A GOLDEN AGE

This morning my mom called while I was lolling in bed with a budding migraine.

“Ohhh, I’m sorry your head hurts,” she said. “I just heard on NPR that people who get migraines are less likely to get breast cancer though!”

“Are you kidding?” I said. Our family has a, um, profound history of breast cancer so this seemed like a slightly morbid in-joke.

“No!” she said. “I swear, I just heard it.”

It’s true: This study found that migraine sufferers had 30% fewer breast cancer incidents. I did not know this:

Menarche, menses, pregnancy, and perimenopause may carry a different migraine risk conceivably because of fluctuating estrogen levels, and in general, migraine frequency is associated with falling estrogen levels.

It makes sense, though — my doctor told me back in 2004 or something that, for instance, birth control pills could trigger migraines. The pill manipulates your cycle and therefore the migraine risks at various points therein.

On the one hand, this feels a bit like knowing I could cut off a finger in order to lower my risk of breast cancer. Migraines are terrible and I have them pretty frequently (once or twice a month, down from my all-time high of once every few days), and I would still trade them even if it restored that 30% risk.

Then again, my aunt, my other aunt, my grandmother, my great aunt, and my great grandmother all had breast cancer. My mom had an enormous benign tumor removed several years ago, and I had a sizable benign tumor removed by surgery when I was 20.

I’ll keep that 30% reduction after all.

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