New research suggests that sex may help reduce migraine pain. The journal "Cephalagia" published the finding this month, stating that sex does help relieve migraine pain and some people actually use sex as a sort of headache therapy. Stefan Evers, a neurologist and headache specialist stated that "there's a portion of patients with migraines, about one-third, who experience relief from a migraine attack by sexual activity". Although the researchers are unsure about why this relief of pain occurs, they hypothesize that it may be the rush of endorphins during sex that help numb the area in pain. Although there have been previous studies about this finding, they used small sample sizes, making it harder to compare to the broad population. Thus, Evers and his colleagues wanted to see if this phenomenon happened in a broader sample size. The sample size consisted of 1,000 people (800 patients who had migraines and 200 who had cluster headaches). Every participant was sent a questionnaire about their sexual activity during a headache attack and how the sex affected the pain intensity. However, the diffuclty with a study like this is that it is not likely for all participants to send the questionnaires back. In fact, in this study, only 4 in 10 people responded. Thus, about only 40% (400 people) replied. Although this is not a terrible turnout, it is not ideal. In fact, if I were the researcher I would send out at least 200-300 more questionnaires to different people. However, after collecting the questionnaires from the 400 people, the results were that about a third of patients engaged in sexual activity in the midst of a migraine or cluster headache. Of migraine sufferers, about 60% experienced relief from their headache. However, for another third of the 400 respondents, patients claimed that sex worsened the migraines. Thus, about 133 of the patiens said migraines got worse and another 133 said migraines got better. In the case of cluster headaches, the results were that about a third reported some type of relief, and about 50% said their headaches worsened. The problem with these numbers is that we only know about 400 people responded, but we don't know which group they belonged to. Personally, I would like to know how many people responded in each group. Overall, Evers believes that those who experience complete relief release the most endorphins during sex. Also, I found this study to be interesting because although this has been a topic of interest for years, this is the largest number of patients that have been studied (Is 400 really a big number?). I think that this study should be repeated a few more times, and with a better patient turnout for it to be considered "pure" or accurate. I also picked this to write about because it dealt with questionnaires (surveys) of patients, something we have been talking about in class (but about politics). Because this research was based primarily on questionnaires, I wondered about the following questions while reading the results:
1. What if the patients had nonattitudes?
2. How did they pick their sample?
3. How do they know the correct people answered the questionnaire?
4. How do they know if people were lying or not? (Malingerers)
5. Why would they not use the same number of migraine patients and cluster headache patients?
6. Is 400 respondents a representative number? Does 400 people justify a significant finding?
7. As asked before, which groups did the 400 people belong to?
All these questions appeared as I was reading the article. Although I think it was an interesting article, I'm not 100% sold.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/03/05/sex-may-relieve-migraines/
In response to your question about a representative sample, I believe that if you only estimate a 40% return of your questionnaires and you hope for a standard error of 1%, like we discussed in class. Our sample size would need to be (assuming the worst, a 0.5 probability) roughly 2500 actual respondents. At a 40% return rate we can assume that a sample size of 6250 people need to be surveyed. Unfortunately with such a large sample it is difficult to make sure your sample is representative. What I would suggest is a anonymous test administered by multiple Medical/Psychological Professionals across the country in order to increase an accurate sample size (However, this would only serve to identify those who would respond to such a survey, and therefore should be noted when reporting the results).
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