Researchers have found that headache stimuli also affect the appetite centre of the brain. It is always been a mystery as to why loss of appetite often accompanies pain. People with migraine, for instance, cannot face food and it is often assumed this must be because one common linked symptom is nausea.
Scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre and Harvard Medical School now reveal, in a study, the changes in the brain when pain takes away your appetite. From a group of migraine sufferers they found that their appetite decreased as headache intensified.This usually happens either before nausea or even in its absence.Then the researchers gave pain stimuli to rats and discovered that they activated not just brain cells that transmit pain signals, but also those involved in appetite suppression. Headache stimuli lead to an acute fall in food intake during the first four hours after they are applied.This shows that there is an intimate link between the brain regions and the pain and appetite.
