Pets and Migraine: What a 3,017-Person, 2-Year Study Found

Can a Pet Change Your Migraine?

Stress, anxiety, and poor sleep are some of the most common things people with migraine say make their attacks worse. Many people say their pets help with all three, so it's reasonable to ask whether pets affect migraine itself. Until now, there was almost no research on this. A small 1994 survey in Headache compared 62 people with headache or chronic pain to 38 people without and found no sign that owning a pet protected anyone.²

A new study published this week in The American Journal of Medicine is much larger and followed people over time. Researchers at several hospitals in China tracked 3,017 people with diagnosed migraine for two years and compared those who kept pets, got new pets, gave up pets, or never had one.¹

How the Study Worked

This was a prospective cohort study, meaning the researchers enrolled people first and then followed what happened, rather than looking back through old records. Everyone had migraine diagnosed by the international criteria (ICHD-3). Over two years, the team tracked how often attacks happened, how painful they were, anxiety, sleep quality, migraine-specific quality of life, and how much acute and preventive medication people used.¹

Pet status wasn't treated as fixed. People were grouped by what happened during the study, so the researchers could look at more than a simple comparison of owners and non-owners.

The most useful part of the design is that it compares people with themselves before and after a change. That removes some differences between people, such as personality or genetics, that a simple comparison of owners and non-owners can't account for. The analyses were adjusted for baseline differences between groups and for missing data.¹

What They Found

Compared with people who never had a pet, people who kept one for the full two years did better on every outcome the study tracked. All of these differences reached P<0.001.¹

The pattern held up when people's pet status changed:

A dose-response pattern, along with benefits that fade when the pet is gone, makes it more plausible that pets play a causal role. It still doesn't prove it, as explained in the limitations section below.

The lower medication use is also relevant. Using less acute pain medication matters for anyone close to the threshold for medication overuse headache. If you're not sure where you stand, our medication overuse headache checker walks through the thresholds.

Dogs vs Cats

Dog owners had better results than cat owners or owners of other animals (P<0.05). That included symptom improvement and lower medication use.¹

There are several possible reasons dogs did better, though the study didn't test any of them directly:

This also means some of the benefit seen with dogs could come from exercise. People who choose dogs may already be more active, have more space, or have more time.

Why Pets Might Help

The authors suggest a straightforward explanation: anxiety, poor sleep, and chronic stress all aggravate migraine, and pets may ease all three.¹ A few smaller studies suggest possible biological reasons.

Sleep likely plays a large role. Poor sleep and migraine make each other worse, and our write-up on sleep duration and migraine shows how much sleep length alone is tied to attack risk.

What This Study Can't Prove

This is an observational study. Nobody was randomly assigned a pet, so the results show associations, and the authors word their conclusions that way.¹ The following factors could explain some or all of the results.

Reverse causation is the most important limitation. For example, someone with chronic migraine who is having a difficult year may find it too hard to care for a dog and give it to a new home. In the data, that would look like their migraine got worse after they gave up the pet, when it actually happened the other way around. Comparing people with themselves helps, but it can't fully rule this out.

What This Means for You

If you already have a pet, or were already planning to get one, these habits may help:

• Walk your dog every day. Daily walks give you regular aerobic exercise, time in daylight, and a consistent wake-up time.
• Keep the same schedule on weekends. Large changes in sleep and wake times are a common migraine trigger, and a pet's feeding schedule can help you keep regular hours.
• Plan for bad days. Arrange for a neighbor, friend, or dog walker who can help when you have a migraine attack.
• Watch for allergies. Pet dander can cause nasal congestion and sinus symptoms that are easy to confuse with headache.

Pets don't replace medical treatment. If your attacks are frequent, a preventive treatment plan is far more important. The AAN and AHS prevention guideline covers what the evidence supports, and if you're already on a preventive, our preventive response calculator helps you check whether it's working.

If you track your attacks, note your exercise, sleep, and time with your pet as well. That information is useful at your next appointment, and our appointment summary sheet keeps it in one place.

The Bottom Line

This is the largest study of pets and migraine so far, and all of its findings point in the same direction. People did better when they had a pet, and dog owners did best. What we can't tell yet is how much of that is the pet itself and how much is the walking, routine, money, and health that tend to come with being able to keep one. For people who already have a pet or are able to care for one, the results are encouraging. They aren't a reason to get a pet if you otherwise wouldn't.