Not Tonight Dear? Research Reconsiders Headaches and Sexual Desire

The stereotype of women as lacking strong sexual desire is slowly becoming a thing of the past. As the idea that women can and do possess their own sexual agency is increasingly accepted, clichés about women avoiding sex with lines like “not tonight dear, I have a headache” have been slowly disappearing.

Research into the relationship between headaches and sexual desire is not only catching up to the feminist movement, its telling us something unexpected about the old joke.

A recent study, published in the journal Headache, examined the potential relationship between diagnosis of migraine headaches and self reported sexual desire in sixty-eight men and women who reported having at least 10 headaches a year. Subjects were interviewed to diagnose their headache type (either migraine or tension) and were asked to fill out a 14-item questionnaire to measure sexual desire.

What might be surprising to some is that researchers were expecting people who experience migraines to report higher levels of sexual desire. The reason for this hypothesis is tied to serotonin, a brain chemical that also plays a role in depression. An excess of serotonin may be associated with decreased libido (seen most noticeably in the sexual dampening effect of SSRIs), and migraine sufferers are reported to have low system levels of the brain chemical. According to background information in the study, serotonin has also been found to play a role in migraine attacks.

The results confirmed that both men and women with migraines reported higher levels of sexual desire than those with tension headaches. They also perceived themselves as having higher sexual desire than their peers.

The study is limited both by a small sample size and a lack of representation (participants were mostly young and were primarily recruited from a college campus), but the researchers point out that it offers another demonstration of the relationship between serotonin, migraine, and sexual desire.

One of the messages I’m most interested in from this study is the relationship between migraine and a positive sexual experience. Living with any kind of debilitating condition or disability is almost universally associated with a lack of sexuality. Despite the fact that many people living with disabilities report a better sex life after disability, the myth is that pain and disability makes you asexual. This research offers support that the opposite can be true. The researcher’s acknowledge this in their final thoughts in the paper, commenting on tenacity of that old headache joke:

The excuse, “Not tonight honey I have a headache,” will probably remain a valid option in eluding sexual activity, but those suffering from migraine may be the least likely to use it.

Reference:
Houle, T., Dhingra, L., et. al. “Not Tonight, I Have a Headache?” Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain Vol. 46. Issue 6 (2006): 983-990.

Related – How does orgasm impact migraine headaches?

Previously - Sex and Chronic Pain