10 Celebrities With Migraine
You may be surprised by some of the household names who live, and thrive, with migraine.
Migraine is the third most prevalent illness in the world, according to the Migraine Research Foundation, so it’s no surprise that plenty of celebrities live with the disease. But only some celebs have gone public about having migraine.
Like noncelebrities with migraine, famous people who have it may worry about missing work and social opportunities if it’s known they have migraine. They may be concerned about being seen as weak, unreliable, or “difficult” if they need to take time off or ask for accommodations. It may seem easier to keep quiet.
Those celebrities who do reveal their migraine may do so only when an attack has interfered with their work at a time when all eyes are upon them — and then say little beyond acknowledging they have it.
But other well-known athletes, actors, singers, and TV personalities have chosen to speak publicly about their diagnosis and the impact it’s had on their lives. Many do it for the benefit of everyone living with migraine — to raise awareness and understanding of this often debilitating disease.
Here’s a sampling of stars who live with migraine.
1. Serena Williams Hid Her Migraine and ‘Toughed Out’ Practices
Tennis powerhouse Serena Williams has dealt with migraine attacks throughout her career, but she hid the condition for years, even from her father, who was also her coach, she told People magazine in August 2020. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and Williams was staying home most of the time with her husband and daughter, her symptoms began occurring almost daily, she said.
“I’ve always had migraines, but I don’t think I realized what they were until I was in my twenties. I remember being younger and having to stop training, and I would always complain to my mom that I have a headache, but I never actually connected that it was a migraine,” she said in a promotional video for Ubrelvy, the migraine medication she represents.
“If you have knee pain, it’s something that you can see, or if you’re sick and you’re coughing, people say to stay home. It’s different with migraine. People are like, ‘You have to leave work because you have a headache? It’s not that big of a deal.’ This is a horrible situation to be in when you’re doing your job,” she says in the video, adding that she often wouldn’t mention her migraine after losing a match out of fear of seeming as if she were making excuses. As a result, she often “toughed it out” at practice and during matches, feeling that she couldn’t leave the court because of a migraine attack.
Williams notes that she often realizes an attack is starting when she experiences light sensitivity.
She revealed to Newsweek magazine in 2005 that her migraine attacks are triggered by her menstrual cycle. For years, though, she thought the timing of her attacks was coincidental.
2. Terrell Davis Played in the Super Bowl During a Migraine Attack
Former Denver Broncos running back Terrell Davis has had migraine attacks for most of his life, according to an interview he gave People magazine in 2019. In the interview, Davis recalled experiencing a migraine attack during the 1998 Super Bowl: Just before running onto the field, Davis realized he’d forgotten to take his migraine medication. He ran back into the locker room to take the tablet, but it was too late. A migraine attack crept up and benched Davis for the second quarter of the game. Nonetheless, he did end up playing during the second half of the game — so well, in fact, that he earned the most valuable player title.
Having had this attack in such a public forum, Davis realized he could use his own experience with migraine to help others with the disease. And indeed, most of the fan mail he received after the game was from people thanking him for openly talking about migraine.
Davis mentioned his migraine again during his induction speech into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in August 2017, telling the audience how he put up with nausea, headache, and temporary blindness as a 9-year-old so that he could continue to play football.
According to the People interview, it took Davis years to find a migraine treatment that worked for him. He now uses a combination of preventive medication, healthy diet, and CBD to keep migraine attacks at bay. (Anecdotally, CBD may be helpful for treating nausea associated with migraine, but there’s very little research supporting this or other uses of CBD in the treatment of migraine.)
Three times as many women as men have migraine, a fact that may lead some men to be reluctant to disclose they have it, too.
“It’s one of those things men are not comfortable talking about,” Davis said onstage at the 2019 Migraine World Summit. “I see more guys talking about it now, but it’s not a lot. It wasn’t until I was retired that guys would say, ‘I went through it, too.’ I was like, ‘Why didn’t you say anything back then?’ If you have migraines, it’s okay to talk about it.”
3. Khloe Kardashian Has Had Migraine Attacks on Reality TV
Fans of the TV series Keeping Up With the Kardashians have witnessed Khloe Kardashian’s experience with grueling, intensely painful migraine attacks that make her sensitive to light and nauseated to the point of vomiting. She recently became a spokesperson for the migraine medication Nurtec ODT (rimegepant).
Kardashian had her first migraine attack when she was in the sixth grade, but her symptoms were often written off by family members as an exaggeration since none of her kin had experienced migraines for themselves, Kardashian told Shape in a September 2020 interview.
“People would say things like, ‘Oh, you’re being dramatic,’ ‘You’re not in that much pain,’ or ‘You’re still going to school,’ and I was like, 'This isn’t an excuse to get out of school. I literally can’t function,’” she said in the interview.
Her headaches are also getting worse as she gets older, sometimes lasting for as long as two days, and her condition got much worse at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, she added.
It would appear that Kardashian isn’t the only one whose migraine attacks have been affected by the pandemic. According to a study conducted in Kuwait and published in September 2020 in the Journal of Headache and Pain, many people who experience migraine are reporting having more frequent attacks or more severe symptoms since the end of 2019. Nearly 60 percent of the 1,018 study participants said they experienced more frequent migraine attacks since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and 10 percent said their condition had transitioned from episodic to chronic migraine. Just over 64 percent said the severity of their attacks had worsened.
4. Kristin Chenoweth Gets Botox Injections for Migraine
The singer, actor, and Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth experienced her first migraine attack at age 25, in the middle of a performance with the Virginia Symphony, as she described to the American Academy of Neurology consumer magazine Brain & Life. The vomiting, head pain, and extreme light sensitivity and dizziness that followed scared her — she thought she was having a brain aneurysm or a stroke — and also gave her newfound empathy for her mother, who had experienced similar attacks during Chenoweth’s childhood.
Chenoweth was eventually diagnosed with vestibular migraine as well as Ménière’s disease, which causes vertigo, tinnitus, and aural fullness, or a “clogged” feeling in the ears. Her migraine is chronic, meaning it occurs on 15 or more days per month.
As Chenoweth told Brain & Life, a combination of an injectable triptan medication for acute symptoms and a calcium channel blocker to prevent attacks helped to reduce the frequency and severity of her migraines. But what has really helped — and allowed her to continue her career as a performer — was Botox injections every five or six months.
Chenoweth has spoken publicly about having migraine many times over the years to offer support to others who live with the disease and let them know they’re not alone.
5. Ben Affleck Had to Leave a Film Set Because of a Migraine Attack
In 2006, the actor and director Ben Affleck had to leave the set and go to the emergency room to be treated for a severe migraine attack while he was directing his first feature film, Gone, Baby, Gone, according to CBS News.
Affleck hasn't stated publicly how often experiences migraine, but in an interview with The Early Show, he attributed the attack to overwork, not enough sleep, and being tense while directing the film.
Stress is a common trigger for migraine, although many people are more likely to experience attacks once a stressful period ends, rather than during a time of acute stress, according to Migraine Again.
Stress management strategies such as regular physical exercise, breathing exercises, and calming music may help lower the likelihood of a stress-related migraine attack.
Sleep deprivation, oversleeping, and disrupted sleep are also commonly reported migraine triggers. It can help to go to bed and get up at about the same time each day and to practice good sleep hygiene, which includes avoiding caffeine after a certain hour of the day, creating a dark, comfortable environment in your bedroom, and having a pre-bedtime routine that helps you relax and unwind.
6. Whoopi Goldberg Finally Found Effective Migraine Treatment in Her Sixties
Like many people with migraine, the comedian, actor, and television personality Whoopi Goldberg, 65, lived with the disease for much of her life with no real treatment.
As she told Migraine Again in 2021, the doctor who diagnosed her when she was a young woman told her he didn’t have much to offer, and the over-the-counter products she tried for years didn’t help, nor did her use of marijuana and CBD.
Goldberg has migraine with aura, and she says she knows a migraine attack is starting when she sees what she describes as a strip of aluminum foil, or a spinning silver wind-chime-like object, in her peripheral vision. Once the attack is underway, she says, she wants nothing more than to curl up in a ball on the floor.
Things started to change for Goldberg in July 2020, when Khloe Kardashian appeared on The View, a daytime TV talk show Goldberg co-hosts. Kardashian talked about her experience using a new, acute migraine drug called Nurtec ODT (rimegepant) — and she was convincing enough that Goldberg asked her own doctor if she could give it a try. Goldberg also found that Nurtec ODT stopped her migraine attack symptoms quickly, and she’s now an enthusiastic spokesperson for the drug.
7. Janet Jackson Has Vestibular Migraine
Janet Jackson’s migraine was revealed after she had to cancel two weeks of concerts back in 2008. Jackson began experiencing vertigo during a sound check for a show in Montreal in late September 2008, according to E!. She later revealed through her publicist that she’s been diagnosed with vestibular migraine, a rare form of migraine with symptoms that include vertigo — the sensation that you’re moving, falling, or spinning when you are actually still — or dizziness.
The star herself has never spoken publicly about having migraine.
According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, vestibular migraine attacks often don’t include a throbbing headache — the hallmark of most migraine attacks — though they can. Instead, common symptoms include sensitivity to motion, vertigo, and dizziness that can last for minutes to days. Before doctors identified vestibular migraine as a migraine condition, which is neurological, they considered it a psychological one.
8. Marcia Cross Got Her First Migraine Attack as a Teenager
The actor Marcia Cross had her first migraine at age 14. She was in middle school and believed she was having a stroke, the Desperate Housewives star said in an interview with Brain & Life.
Cross said she spent a lot of time during her adolescence lying in bed coping with the pain and sensitivity to light brought on by her migraine attacks. She was diagnosed with migraine with aura.
According to the Mayo Clinic, people who have migraine with aura often experience visual symptoms including blind spots, spots, or zigzags, as well as a tingling sensation in the face or hands, or difficulty with speech, during the aura phase of the attack, which typically precedes the headache phase. Migraine with aura is sometimes confused with stroke, since the two conditions share some symptoms.
Cross once collapsed on set and had to be rushed to the emergency room to be treated for migraine, she told Brain & Life. Later in her career, the actress was a spokesperson for the migraine medication Imitrex (sumatriptan), according to ABC News.
9. Jordin Sparks Says Migraine Runs in Her Family
Singer Jordin Sparks went public about her experience with migraine attacks after becoming a spokesperson for the headache medication Excedrin, according to the entertainment website Pop Crush. In a commercial for the medication, Sparks talks about how she remembers being young and watching her mother cope with migraine attacks. As an adult, she has her own firsthand experience.
It’s well known that migraine runs in families. According to the American Migraine Foundation, 70 percent of children who have migraine headaches have a family member who also has the condition or did when they were young.
Speaking on The Doctors TV show in 2015, Sparks said her migraine attacks start with dull head pain that intensifies and a perception of light on the outer edge of her visual field, followed by nausea and sensitivity to light and sound. She finds it helpful to lie in a darkened room during the attack. Sparks noted that floral-scented perfumes are a trigger for her migraine attacks.
10. Freddie Ljungberg’s Attacks Can Be Triggered by Low Blood Sugar
The former Swedish soccer player Freddie Ljungberg says that hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, is a primary trigger of his migraine attacks. He once told The Telegraph that migraine attacks make him vomit, lose his vision, and cause his hands to go numb, and the only way to get through an attack is to get plenty of rest in a dark room.
0 Comments