Migraines Retreat With Diet Modifications
The research is clear, food intolerance, allergies, and
hypersensitivities are key triggers of headaches and migraines.
Although each migraine sufferer may react to a different food or
group of foods, there are a few which seem to pop up as frequent
offenders: dairy (including milk, cheeses, and yogurt), wheat,
eggs, soy, corn, citrus, chocolate, coffee, beef, yeast, red
wine, and processed foods with additives and preservatives.
In the pursuit to identify these top offenders, scientists and
physicians have enlisted the oligoantigenic diet. This is a
hypoallergenic "elimination" diet, consisting of a selection of
foods that are presumably well tolerated. During their studies,
patients are told to eat only the "safe" foods outlined on their
version of the oligonantigenic diet in an effort to eliminate
any symptoms. Once the symptoms have gone into remission, the
"high risk" foods are re-introduced into the diet one at a time
to assess their potential trigger effect on symptoms. This type
of diet should be undertaken with the assistance of a physician,
in order to ensure adequate nutritional intake. In each of the 3
case studies listed below, some form of an oligoantigenic diet
was used:
60 migraine patients followed an elimination diet after a 5-day
withdrawal from their normal diet. Upon reintroduction, specific
foods elicited migraine reactions in a significant percentage of
patients: wheat (78%), oranges (65%), eggs (45%), tea and coffee
(40% each), chocolate and milk (37% each), beef (35%), and corn,
cane sugar, and yeast (33% each). When an average of ten common
trigger foods were avoided, there was a dramatic decline in the
number of headaches per month and 85% of patients actually
became headache-free! As science would have it, an added benefit
was welcomed by the 25% of these patients who also had
hypertension - their blood pressure returned to normal levels.
In a clinical trial 93% of 88 children who suffered frequent and
severe migraines recovered on oligoantigentic diets. Most of the
patients responded to several foods, which suggested the
probability of an allergic rather than a metabolic cause. An
added bonus... abdominal pain, behavior disorder, fits, asthma,
and eczema also improved in several of these patients. A
research study trialed an oligoantigenic diet on 63 children
with epilepsy, 45 of which also suffered from migraines,
hyperkinetic behavior, or both. The 18 children who had epilepsy
alone saw no improvement on the oligoantigenic diet. However, of
the 45 children with additional symptoms, 25 ceased to have
seizures and 11 had fewer seizures while on this diet.
Migraines, abdominal pain, and hyperkinetic behavior halted in
the 25 children who stopped having seizures, and also in some of
those who did not stop having seizures. Reintroduction of foods
one by one confirmed that the seizures, migraines, hyperkinetic
activity, and abdominal pain these children were experiencing
related to 42 different "trigger" foods.
So why do so many people suffer from migraines and other
headaches when they consume these foods? The medical community
is getting closer to an answer. Researchers in Germany have
discovered a genetic mutation responsible for the "faulty
wiring" and the subsequent pain. Although clinical scientists
have known for a while that migraines are hereditary, the exact
"defect" being passed on was previously unknown.