Tennis star Serena Williams is championing a new drug that combats menstrual migraines after finding the medication has helped her beat her problems with blinding headaches.

The sports star has secretly been battling migraines for much of her professional tennis career and admits she was amazed when she discovered miracle drug Frovatriptan.

And now she has signed up to promote the drug after discovering it's one of the few medications she can legally take before or during tennis matches.

She says, "Our products have to be checked. We can't take any type of medication.

"This medication that I'm taking is great for migraines and it does wonderful work and I've actually suffered from several migraines... It's great that you can take a medication that's so positive that doesn't affect your performance in any way."

Williams admits she has tried many different medications to help her combat migraines, but few of them worked for her.

She adds, "Some doctors tell you it's mental. One of my doctors actually told me that, 'You have to get over it. There's nothing really wrong with you. You just think it is when it gets to be that time of the month.' I was thinking, 'I've got to be more mentally tough.'

"But you want to just crawl under your bed and stay there. I know it doesn't look like it affected my tennis, but, especially in the sun, playing with a migraine makes it worse.

"In Australia it's not that easy. I remember playing Martina Hingis in Sydney, and I was just out of it."

Williams blames her migraines for her defeat at the hands of ALINA JIDKOVA in Austria last October (04).

She states, "It was the last straw. I lost to this girl I would never lose to because I had such an incredible headache."

13/04/2005 03:09