In migraine between attacks, neck and hand pain thresholds were lower when the headaches were not tied to sleep

What the research found

Scandinavian Journal of Pain published a clinical study on 9 November 2026. Morten Engstrom and colleagues compared pressure pain thresholds at the temple, the neck, the shoulder, and a fingertip, plus heat and cold pain thresholds on the forehead and the palm. The groups were 33 people with migraine between attacks, split into sleep-related and not sleep-related, 20 people with tension-type headache, split into episodic and chronic, and controls matched on age and sex. The abstract used here does not give the size of each split or the ages. People with migraine that was not sleep-related had lower pressure thresholds at the splenius (p = 0.001) and trapezius (p = 0.011) and lower heat (p = 0.009) and cold (p = 0.031) thresholds on the palm than controls. In that same group, a slow-burst index from overnight sleep recording lined up inversely with heat thresholds on the palm and the forehead (rho to -0.57, p at or under 0.04). In episodic tension-type headache, more deep sleep lined up with a higher cold threshold on the forehead (rho = 0.86, p = 0.01) and a higher fingertip pressure threshold (rho = 0.76, p = 0.03). This is an association between sleep physiology and pain thresholds. It is not a sleep plan. DOI 10.1515/sjpain-2026-0031. Not medical advice.

Evidence level: Human study. A study in people, but an association isn't proof of cause.

Read the original at Scandinavian Journal of Pain