Migraine

Hi everybody.
I wish to share my view that a specific food may be the trigger for a crisis, but this is different from another type of food which acts more in reducing the interval between 2 crisis.
In that way, alcohol intake may trigger a crisis in a few hours, but a specific change in your alimentation will provoke after a while (at least a few days or more) a change in the frequency of the crisis.
It seems to me that some specific metabolite accumulates slowly in specific areas, and that a crisis has to happens when this metabolite has reached a threshold. At this moment, anything can trigger the crisis. And the crisis flushes out this metabolite, on one side first, then on the other side. After that, a slow repletion completes the cycle.
What is this metabolite? I don't know, but I find that excluding specific fermented cheeses, yeast bread (pain au levain), oats and cabbage from my alimentation reduces the frequency of the crisis.
What do you think ?

Sometimes you can have foods that trigger you all of the time while other foods will trigger you sometimes or along with another stackable trigger or exasperating factor. There is some really good information in this podcast on triggers and here is the transcript that goes with the podcast.

Stackable triggers are triggers that don't necessarily trigger a Migraine by itself, but can trigger a Migraine when we come across other stackable triggers or stress. As an example, I have to be very careful with chocolate. I can have a little chocolate without it triggering a Migraine, but if I didn't sleep well the night before or if I'm a little dehydrated, then I can't have any chocolate. At this point, I prefer to just stay away from chocolate as that seems to be easier and I was a chocoholic.

Here is more information on Managing Migraine Food Triggers and there is a whole section on this site about Migraine Triggers. I wish you the best and hope some of these materials help answer your questions.

Puppet
http://migrainepuppet.blogspot.com/

I think that this kind of question is for biochemists, which I'm not.

Hello MigrainePuppet, Hello Dragondrool,

Glad no everybody is not away on vacation. Hope you are well today.

I wish to tell of one experience I had: I spent a week within an autarky community in France where the food what home made and I ate yeast bread left all night, soft paste cheese with little holes in it and a sticky crust (no name for it).
The second day of my arrival I was miserable, had to lie on a bed in the dark the whole day. I spent 5 days out of 8 severely ill. I had never been affected by migraine to that extent. Although a psychological factor could be involved too, I think either of these aliments contains a substance that has a good probability to not only trigger a crisis but also to be part of the physiology of my migraines.
I think some food triggers may be more than simple triggers and should be investigated thoroughly to help our understanding of the disease.

Do you know of any research in that field like: single food diet, introducing test food one by one and so on?

Luc,
I tried a diet like you are describing years ago. My neurologist called it a "Caveman Diet." I cut out all foods that were not fresh and freshly-prepared. I had to give up coffee, bread, all cured meats, all cheeses, milk, tea.

I could eat plain rice, broiled chicken, iceberg lettuce, and other such bland foods for a week. Then, one by one, week by week, I re-introduced other foods into my diet. If any food triggered a migraine, I had to leave it out, wait a week, and try something else.

I was allowed to build up my foods, and start adding in the foods that are the ones that usually trigger migraines. These are tomatoes, cured meats, yeasty breads, caffiene, milk and cheeses, chocolate, alcohol, etc.

Is this the diet you are talking about?

Rebecca, The Island Mama

Hello Rebecca,

Glad to meet you through this forum.
Sharing our experience is good. Has this "caveman diet" proved useful to you ?
I understand that this experience was a way to identify your personal food triggers with the help of a specialist and based on the knowledge we currently accept collectively on this matter.

But I personally do not accept this knowledge. That is because it is empirical, based mostly on observations and very poorly understood at the biochemical level. Where caffeine, alcohol, glutamate are precise pharmacologically active substances, labelled food is not. Moreover, how could we reproduce what "bland food" is exactly? What is the trigger in cured meat? Which kind of cheese is concerned and why?
And all these chemicals and food are placed on the same level, in a large bag labelled "food triggers" in another larger bag called "migraine triggers". That is not satisfying. No two chemicals act in the same way. No two have the same pharmacological behavior.
If a diet may have a significant preventive effect on your migraine crisis you assume that some chemical(s) found in food indeed participate to the migraine mecanisms. If the lack of this chemical in your food only delays the onset of the crisis, but the total crisis burden remains unchanged on a large time period, that is not very useful I think.
But if the diet provides durably less frequent crisis or less severe pain, then the diet is useful.
So my idea was more an experimental trial, on a precise chemical, on a time period long enough not to miss a delayed effect, ideally with a panel of migraineurs in a double bind condition (neither the patient nor the scientist knows which one takes the pill and which one takes the nocebo) together with a convincing diet, like white rice or corn flakes and water, no additives, during the time of the trial that should be done under medical supervision.
That would be a good start to understand what precisely goes wrong with the chemical system in some of my synaptic vesicles.
We could confirm/infirm some interesting theories then:
For example that migraine could be in some cases a genetic enzymatic deficit that somehow provokes the accumulation of some serotonine-like neurotranmitter here and there from the niacine-like chemical(s) found in some foods.
Then I may consult that man, thank you.

Oh I am so much not patient that I suddenly realize how my answer may be rude.

How is the ocean today, Rebecca ?

No, Luc,
Your answer is not rude! You are just asking for a far more detailed answer than I have the ability to give. You must have an excellent education in biochemistry!

Your double-blind experiment would be quite a challenge! And, yes, it would be exceedingly difficult to set up and maintain with a human population. You have given me a lot to think about.

I actually live on a small tidal creek, about 12 miles from the ocean. Today, it is going to be warm here - a high temperature in the 90's (F), with a high relative humidity. I'll have to bring my dogs back inside soon.

Be well!

Rebecca, The Island Mama

Bonjour Rebecca,

It's good to read from you.
I have too much caffeine in my body, I think I need to relax.
I have no dogs, but I have cats. two of them, frequently jealous and fighting each other over territory: orange and clarence...

See you

I may propose a clue as to why food triggers do not seem to have been very well identified and their mecanisms completely understood yet. It may have to do with history: when doctors found that migraine had no digestive origin but that the crisis manifested in the brain instead, they stopped listening to those boring incoherent digestive complaints as irrelevant but all the research became focused on neurology. And food triggers may have become the neglected size of the disease. I suppose this field may still be neglected. Scientists may still consider this a matter of patient management, not a good field for research.
Would anybody provide links or information on this?

Luc,

Let ME ask YOU a question. Do YOU have Migraines?

Nobody here feels like a philosophical discussion about food triggers OR finding any darned links for you!

quote:

Originally posted by Luc:
I may propose a clue as to why food triggers do not seem to have been very well identified and their mecanisms completely understood yet. It may have to do with history: when doctors found that migraine had no digestive origin but that the crisis manifested in the brain instead, they stopped listening to those boring incoherent digestive complaints as irrelevant but all the research became focused on neurology. And food triggers may have become the neglected size of the disease. I suppose this field may still be neglected. Scientists may still consider this a matter of patient management, not a good field for research.
Would anybody provide links or information on this?

I have a theory as to why it's so difficult to sort out where the basis of food triggers lie, too. Food is essentially chemical in nature, and is made of of a complex variety of chemical elements in almost endless combinations. Considering that everyone is different in terms of what triggers them, and that there may be more than one potential trigger in any food they encounter, varying by individual, it becomes IMPOSSIBLE to sort out the underlying catalyst for the triggering. Nothing in the realm of triggers is one-size-fits-all, which makes it absolutely moot to go searching for specifics. There's no way you can generalize. A particular enzyme or whatnot might play a part for someone, but not for anyone else. There's absolutely no point in wasting funding dollars by throwing it at an unsolvable problem like this.

So...keeping with the best we've got, which is to figure out our own triggers on an individual, trial and error basis, if you identify something that triggers you sometimes but not always, then you make the choice to encounter it or avoid it, and then accept the consequences. It's that simple. Not everything has to be picked apart and studied in close detail.

Dragondrool may be right here, but imagine you have to hunt a beast hidden in a vast forest. you do not post a man behing every tree. you try to learn the habits of the beast. Then, with luck, a few good hounds will do the kill.
What is that "the habits of the beast"? Simply the collective experience of migraine sufferers, like you and me. Be smart and gather it.