What is a Migraine Elimination Diet? Diet affects the frequency and severity of migraine symptoms in some people. The purpose of a migraine elimination diet is to reduce your exposure to common food triggers with the hopes of creating a calmer migraine brain. The migraine trigger list is a long one. Some migraine triggers are unavoidable like hormones, weather, sensory stimulus and so on. Others like irregular sleep, dehydration & food triggers can be avoided in an attempt to reduce our trigger load and to raise our migraine threshold resulting in better control over symptoms. ** While Migraine Strong writes about the latest in migraine treatments, this is not…
-
-
MSG Headache- The Controversy, the Facts and the Real Story
Can MSG cause migraines and headaches? Yes and no. It's controversial but I think once you understand more about this food additive you can answer this question for yourself. Some of you might be on the fence about it as whether or not you have MSG as a migraine trigger while others emphatically notice a strong MSG headache connection. My goal is to help you understand what MSG is and explain the contradictory messages on the internet as well as your own doctor's office.
-
Caffeine and Migraine – Trigger or Treatment
Does caffeine help migraine attacks or is it a trigger? This is one of the most frequently asked questions of neurologists. The topic of caffeine and migraine is often hotly debated on social media and is usually eye-opening. In general, caffeine helps the average person with headaches and occasional migraine attacks. They may enjoy a rich cup of coffee each morning to get things going as well as an afternoon pick-me-up. And, some people love to relax after a nice dinner and sip an espresso, cappuccino or cup of decaf. They may notice that their occasional tension headache or even migraine attack vanishes after enjoying a strong cup of coffee.…
-
5 Reasons Your Migraine Diet Isn’t Working
One message that I receive fairly often on The Dizzy Cook goes something like this – Hello, Iâve been on the Heal Your Headache diet about 2 weeks and Iâm not feeling better. Why is my migraine diet not working? If anything, I feel worse. Should I stop? Can you help?! It seems crazy to me that anyone would expect huge changes just two weeks in, but I forget that I used to be one of them. I was about a month or two into the Heal Your Headache diet when I felt frustrated with it as I wasnât really seeing any noticeable relief. It was difficult to always have…
-
How to Recognize Migraine Baseline and Reintroduce Foods After an Elimination Diet
The migraine brain is said to be hyper responsive to its surrounding environment. We respond with migraine attacks to things that people without migraine wouldnât react to at all. The Bucket Theory was developed as a way to explain how difficult to control triggers (like hormones, stress and weather) fill up a portion of our bucket each day. While these triggers are hard to manage, the ones that we have some control over are the ones that we eat and drink each day. ** While Migraine Strong writes about the latest in migraine treatments, this is not medical advice. We are patient educators and all information you read should be…
-
Diet – Show Me the Science!
You know what used to really irk me? When people would say, âthere is no science to support changing your diet to help reduce migraine.â It doesnât bother me much anymore as I have experienced the powerful effect of diet for myself as well as witnessed countless examples of diet helping people get significantly better. As a licensed professional (registered dietitian), I pride myself on only using evidence-based approaches to help people, but there are few studies to point to and say âA-ha!â Iâm bummed that I have no solid response to the demand, âshow me the science!â but I don’t let it get to me anymore. There is no…
-
My Journey with Vestibular Migraine
I was 30 years old and on top of the world when I became completely debilitated by vestibular migraine. Just returning from a trip to Asia and getting back to work, I was barely sleeping and stressed out. I had been working really hard for the past year to get promoted to a senior product manager at a large watch company. Although I was exhausted, I couldnât miss any more days so I powered through even when I wasnât feeling well. I had mild dizziness, a fuzziness in my head, but it was more annoying than debilitating. First I tried my primary care doctor, who just said it was a…
