Migraine

Well, I have been avoiding the long list of potential migraine trigger foods, hoping to reintroduce them to determine what (if any) my food triggers are. It has been really hard trying to avoid so MANY foods, and it has made me kind of grumpy, but I think it will help me in the end. Blah.

So on Saturday, we were at the mall and my husband wanted to buy some fresh rye bread from the bakery so I said ok. On Monday I stayed home in the morning and had a couple of slices (cheating!) for breakfast, and about 2 hours later a headache came on kind of all of a sudden. It didn't seem like a normal migraine, but the headache was pretty bad. Booooooo. It seems like my biscuit suspicion may have some merit after all, though I still can't be sure exactly what it is. Was it the yeast? Gluten? Flour? Something unrelated to the bread altogether? Not sure.... *sigh*

Has anyone out there actually tried this kind of elimination diet before? I'm not really following a set of strict rules or anything, just trying to avoid the trigger foods and then try them one by one to see if they cause a headache or migraine.

Go away, migraines, you're sneaky and mean.

Many people, here and others, have tried elimination diets. I heard of one woman down to chicken and white rice and that was it.

You should have good turnouts with this. Let us know how it goes.

Managing food triggers can be difficult, and not very fun. Yeast, fresh yeast products can certainly trigger a Migraine attack.

Have you seen this article Managing Migraine Trigger Foods? You may find helpful.

Good luck, keep us posted, ok?

I've done the elimination diet 2 or 3 times in the past. Every time, the result has been that my only food triggers are beer, even non-alcoholic, red wine, even in sauces, and chocolate. I'd call that success. The known triggers are easy to avoid, and when I get an attack, I know that food isn't the trigger.

Gretchen in Mississippi

JavaGirl, if you can get your hands on it, this is a good book for both its discussion of potential food triggers and headache-friendly recipes:

The Headache Prevention Cookbook: Eating Right to Prevent Migraines and Other Headaches by David R Marks.

Amazon link is HERE. I know you're not in the States but it may really be worth it for you to dig up a copy of this book if you can.

Hope this helps!

Hey Javagirl -

The trickiest thing when I've been on elimination diets is not cheating! And that just because if I cheat on something with multiple ingredients, I can't tell what affected me. With your bread experience, you see now that it could have been any one of the components of the bread - the others gave you some good links for more info than I have - but when I added things back in I tried to add components one by one - so since i'm not going to sit down and eat a bowl of yeast, I'd try something with flour first (say a sauce) and if that was okay, try the bread which also has yeast. Make sense? Good luck - I can relate to the crankiness. And also to what Deb said - I was down to white rice and french fries one time!

- Megs

Hi Java Girl (love the name)

I am on the elimination diet too!! I think you are on to something about the bread. I also have a problem with breads, I have not figure out what exactly it is. I am still working on that one.

I was able to find alot of things that triggers for my migraine. Nitrates and soduim for example.

I did what Megs did. I added the components one by one to the recipes and it help alot. The cookbook that MJ suggested is a great one. Another one I used was "The Migraine Cookbook" by Michele Sharp. When you can learn to cook without triggers it helps give you more variety. And I have to agree with Megs and Deb-I was so sick of eating salad and sweet potatoes LOL.

Good luck and let us know what you find out!!

Dar

Thanks everyone for the advice and encouragement! Thanks also for the links! I actually did find an online cookbook for people with migraines that avoids trigger foods and it didn't look too bad.

Megan- you're right about cheating....it's so hard not to! I keep thinking just a little bit of this or that won't hurt, but then if I get a migraine I'm not sure if the little bit of food I ate caused it or not. I know I need to take it slower, but.... arghh....I want to eat everything I see that is yummy!

Dar- Sorry you're on the elimination diet too. I agree...so sick of salads! But I think in the end, I will be glad I did it. Good luck to both of us to figure out this bread trigger.

Hi JavaGirl,

I did the elimination diet last year. I found a lot of good food triggers while on it that I'm sure I wouldn't have found any other way. When I did the diet, I picked one breakfast meal, one lunch and one dinner meal with a snack or two that I could munch on. I think this helped me stick to the diet, but I did get 'caught' cheating too which also invalidates that weeks add in food.

I kept a chart for every new item I added in. Although I tried to add in foods with one component or with ingredients I had already added in, that wasn't always possible. One of the columns on the chart included the ingredients from foods that had stuff which was hard to break out or from first starting the diet where I hadn't added much in yet. This made it easier to identify the like ingredients in foods that did cause problems and eventually detect the problem.

I would like to caution you about the salads though. You not only have to be careful about the individual ingredients in the salad (ie onions), but also the salad dressing. One of the big triggers I found for me is Soybean oil which is in most store salad dressings so I have ended up making my own dressing now.

Good for you for going ahead and trying to find your food triggers. I know it's not easy, but it is definitely worth it! Good luck with the rest of your diet.