Migraine Inducing Foods

A common symptom of food intolerance are migraine headaches.  For many migraine sufferers, there can be a feeling of no hope for their headaches as they come on day after day. While one of the most common cause of migraines is eyestrain (or asthenopia), a simple solution lies before each one of us as we sit down to eat every day.

The cause of an assortment of health problems, food intolerance displays its symptoms when the food is digested rather than immediately when it hits the system like a food allergy does. Therefore signs and symptoms tend to show up as health problems down the line. For example, where an allergy could cause a sudden onrush of hives or swelling of the lips, an intolerance will manifest as irritable bowel syndrome, obesity, or migraine headaches. Noticing a migraine come on during or after  digesting the food (typically more than over an hour after ingestion) can help to determine if the migraine is indeed caused by a particular food.

Migraines are extremely uncomfortable, can sometimes be crippling and frequently are accompanied by nausea and a sensitivity to light or noise. People usually describe the headaches as “throbbing”, “pounding” or “splitting”. They tend to occur in one spot somewhere in the skull but the pain can switch to other spots of the head over the course of it’s lifespan. Sometimes they’ll even happen on both sides of the head at once.

These migraine headaches have a tendency to recur, which makes for more of a case of food intolerance. The duration of a typical migraine is anywhere from 4 to 24 hours. In special cases they can last for days. Those who have symptoms like visual disturbances which occur before the headache begins are experiencing what is commonly referred to as “migraine aura”.  If someone has multiple migraines which recur over months in a particular schedule, it could be due to something more servere going on in their body. The key is to determine what is triggering the migraine and monitoring one’s own diet is a good first step to beating the recurring migraine headache.

The most common foods that cause migraine headaches are alcohol, chocolate, cheese and citrus fruits.  Many people get headaches from different types of wines or just wine in general. Chocolate is often in desserts and even entrees as a sweetener. When it comes to cheese, it appears that the older the cheese the more likely you are to get a migraine from it. Citrus fruits are less likely to cause migraines, but if you notice they are occuring after you consume them, it will usually happen with fruits high in citric acid (easily identifiable by it’s sour taste). Chemicals named “vaso active amines” are found in these foods and may be the root cause of the migraine.

There are 28 million migraine sufferers in the U.S. and over 4 million of them suffer migraines more than once a month. Many physicians are not sure how to solve the problem of the recurring migraine since only a patient with severe recurrence of migraines can get medication for it. Changing one’s diet may be a preferable avenue of treatment for the rest of us.

In order to know what to change in your diet, you should get a food intolerance test, this test will determine which foods are causing a negative reaction in your body, eliminating these foods should improve your overall health and in many case have helped people with chronic migraines.