By DR ELLIE CANNON, MAIL ON SUNDAY COLUMNIST AND GP
Published: 16:53 BST, 29 August 2026 | Updated: 16:58 BST, 30 August 2026
A friend of mine is often floored by chronic migraines. I don’t mean the occasional bad headache dispatched with a couple of paracetamol. They can leave her laid out for days, unable to work or function normally.
Like millions of migraine sufferers, she has spent much of her life seeking specialist treatments – with varying degrees of success.
So when we caught up last month, what she told me was fairly astonishing. ‘My neurologist has started me on Mounjaro,’ she said. ‘And my migraines have stopped.’
I genuinely couldn’t believe it. I knew how much she’d suffered – and Mounjaro, of course, is the diabetes and weight-loss jab that has helped millions shed weight.
My friend didn’t need to lose any weight at all. So why, I wondered, would her neurologist give her a weight-loss drug for migraines?
The answer is fascinating. There are early signs that GLP-1 drugs – the family to which Mounjaro belongs – could reduce migraines in some, irrespective of weight loss. And as a sufferer myself, I wanted to know how. Because a migraine, as I know only too well, is not simply a bad headache.
It is a neurological disorder. The classic symptom is an intense, often one-sided headache, accompanied by debilitating nausea or vomiting and extreme sensitivity to light and sound. An attack can last for up to three days.
Around a third of sufferers also experience an ‘aura’ – neurological disturbances including changes to vision, difficulty speaking and pins and needles or numbness. Symptoms can be so dramatic that patients – and sometimes doctors – fear they are having a stroke.
I genuinely couldn’t believe it. I knew how much she’d suffered – and Mounjaro, of course, is the diabetes and weight-loss jab that has helped millions shed weight, writes Dr Ellie
And the misery doesn’t necessarily end when the pain disappears, with sufferers left exhausted and struggling with brain fog for hours or even days. I’ve been lucky to work with a specialist who, years ago, taught me a simple but classic migraine trick – soluble aspirin.
At the first sign of an attack, I take a high dose dissolved in a sugary drink. For me, it can stop it in its tracks – but others are not so fortunate. At the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting, experts presented evidence that GLP-1s may help. They analysed 22,000 sufferers, and found those on GLP-1s were less likely to need hospital treatment for migraines than those on the usual drugs.
The benefit remained even when accounting for weight-related issues – so it could not be explained by heavier patients losing weight. It doesn’t prove Mounjaro treats migraines, but raises the possibility GLP-1 drugs are easing something which affects the condition.
They appear to have anti-inflammatory effects, and inflammatory signalling is involved in migraines.
