Poor healthy lifestyle and life’s essential 8 are associated with higher risk of new-onset migraine: a prospective cohort study

Lifestyle are closely related to migraine. However, there is a lack of studies investigating the association between Healthy lifestyle or Life’s Essential 8 (LE8) and the risk of migraine. The objective of this research was to investigate the relationship between Healthy lifestyle scores and Life’s essential 8 scores, and migraine.

332,895 UK Biobank participants without migraine were included. Healthy lifestyle were assessed using seven lifestyle factors, and categorized as poor, intermediate, or ideal. LE8, based on the American Heart Association (AHA) Guidelines for Cardiovascular Health (CVH), consist of eight indicators classified as low, moderate, or high CVH. The Cox proportional hazard model was employed to examine the association between Healthy lifestyle scores, LE8 scores, and migraine, with calculations for population-attributable fraction (PAF) and cumulative incidence.

During a median follow-up of 13.58 years, participants in intermediate (HR: 0.91; 95% CI: 0.85, 0.99) or ideal category of Healthy lifestyle (HR: 0.81; 95% CI: 0.73, 0.91) significantly reduced migraine risk compared to the poor category. Similarly, high CVH (HR: 0.73; 95% CI: 0.58, 0.92) also lowered migraine risk, while moderate CVH (HR: 0.93; 95% CI: 0.85, 1.02) did not show a difference compared to low CVH. If all individuals adhered to higher categories of Healthy lifestyle and LE8, approximately 11.38% and 22.05% of migraine cases could be prevented. Among individual lifestyle factors, maintaining an ideal body mass index (BMI), physical activity, sleep duration, sleep pattern, and sedentary time were associated with substantial reductions in migraine risk, by 5.65%, 0.81%, 10.16%, 16.39%, and 6.57%, respectively.

Our study provides evidence that poor Healthy lifestyle and Life’s Essential 8 are associated with higher risk of new-onset migraine.