Elimination diet for headache triggers

What you may want to try to start out with is just keeping a headache diary. Don't cut anything out, just note what you eat, time of awakening, and daily activities, and see if anything jibes with the headaches This is what I was going to suggest, and makes more sense scientifically. Migraine or other health triggers vary widely by person, eliminating a whole bunch of stuff based on random lists from other peple isn't necessarily helpful and can be a lot harder than it needs to be. Get some data first. Try to narrow down what your problem might be then test that specific thing rather than just change everything at once so you can't tell what did or didn't work (and sometimes a wholescale change can affect your health for a while just because of placebo effect). Then if you're still stumped go see either a licensed dietician or a nuerologist, depending on which seems more appropriate. They'll often ask for a food/symptom diary anyway so it makes sense to go already armed with that knowledge. There are a few triggers that are so widespread it won't hurt to try removing them, alcohol and msg for example, but they will show up pretty fast in a food diary too. There is a lot of woo based around this too. When you hear things like 'candida diet', 'detoxify', and naturopath then you're way outside anything evidence or science based and firmly entrenched in woo. Might as well randomise your meal plan and cross your fingers. There is some science too though, you just need to make sure you're seeing real qualified doctor type people.

If you've got migraines, I highly recommend getting a specialist neurologist to work you up; while you're waiting for your appointment, you could log your diet, moods, hormonal stuff, exercise, and headaches to give them some data to start analyzing. My migraine guy did an hour and a half of preliminary workup, during which we didn't even start talking about potential treatment until the last 20 minutes or so-- it was all gathering history, talking about diet, talking about menstruation, investigating conditions that are often related to migraine, etc. After that, it was "oh, well, hm. Try this as a prophylaxis med, then if something breaks through that, have an Imitrex. If that doesn't work for you after three menstrual cycles, we'll try something else. I'm going to throw in an EEG and an MRI, but those are usually normal. And for God's sake, get 20-30 minutes of aerobic exercise every day. Also, observe, observe, and observe. We will figure this out with enough data." Basically, you want to get enough recordkeeping on your side of things to give someone with the correct training someplace to start. The Mayo Clinic has a http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/migraine-headache/ds00120/dsection=causes in some people, and it's pretty short and to the point. If you think it's a specific food, the neurologist should be able to help you make that call and suggest something appropriate.

Elimination diets absolutely work. If you want to do it FAST, drop back to just white rice and vitamins and see if your symptoms improve or disappear. Assuming the symptoms are constant, once you kick your addictions, you'll usually notice improvement within a week or so. If the problems don't abate, then switch to a simple-grain, rice-free diet for another week or two. If they still don't change, you're done... you probably don't have food triggers. You can still see an allergist just in case, but you've probably ruled out food allergies. If symptoms do improve, then gradually add in foods and watch for symptoms. For speed purposes, you can add two foods at a time, and if symptoms develop, drop one of the two. That doubles the speed of food resumption, at a cost of a week or two per trigger you find. Add in staple foods first, the simplest possible example of each type. Don't go to processed foods until very late in the process. If you want it to be convenient, eliminate foods one at a time and see if your symptoms change. But because it takes a week or two with each food, that can take a long time, a year or more. And it's harder to find combination problems that way. It's quite possible that the very last food you eliminate is what's causing the problem, and that means you'll have the symptoms until you get to it. Note that in all cases, if your problem is intermittent, that can slow things down fairly dramatically.

What you may want to try to start out with is just keeping a headache diary. Don't cut anything out, just note what you eat, time of awakening, and daily activities, and see if anything jibes with the headaches. You may be able to narrow down suspects that way without any ticky tinkering. For instance, my headache diary pretty clearly showed me something I had been missing: The 30 minutes I slept in due to having a later class in college lead to The Tuesday Migraine.

Anything can be an allergen for anyone. Also allergies aren't the only, or the most common, cause of migraines. Tracking everything you eat for two or three weeks, yes including seasonings, is going to be much easier and better for you than living on rice and lentils. I've done it, it's really not difficult once you get started. Use a spreadsheet and copy and paste a lot. Print a list of your herbs and spices to keep in the kitchen and just put a tick by the ones you put in each day. Don't worry too much about tracking what's exactly in everything to start with anyway, if there are patterns emerging, or even if there aren't, you can look more closely at the days you have headaches once you've logged a few weeks and have some ballpark data to start with. Tabletting agents and other additives in vitamin tablets can also be allergens or headache triggers, so you don't get a free pass by taking a pill either. If you're going to make a change to your diet that drastic for more than a short time (say a week) then you need to do so with the help of a properly trained professional, which in this case is a licensed dietician (not a naturopath or other form of quack). Otherwise you'll end up with other health problems to worry about.

IANA(Naturopathic)D, but I am working with one right now since I have suspected food allergies. She will be putting me on an elimination diet in months to come, so I'll be watching this thread closely. Because caffeine and nuts are common triggers for people I have never seen an elimination diet with these allowed. As for fruit, I think that's mostly for a candida elimination diet, but you never know with headaches, the pesticides could be the culprit. I skimmed through your links, and I think the last pdf said it well with 'everyone is unique', so there are no hard and fast rules about these things. I have had a lot of success with the elimination of certain foods from my diet, and I think most of what you'll find will be anecdotal evidence on the benefits of doing one of these. I think the key here is to keep a diet diary and track everything you eat, your mood and headaches, and then try to find correlations over several weeks or better yet 3 months. And the more basic you can get your diet the easier it will be to find the links. Good luck!

I haven't come across too much implicating spices, but cinnamon does pop up on some "do not eat" lists, so you might try to avoid that. I found that ginger tends to trigger my headaches, but that is unusual, in fact ginger is frequently touted as a cure. You might try limiting the number of different spices you use initially, then change or eliminate them if you aren't getting relief, or slowly add some back in if you are.

Ok, one more question: what about spices? I feel like I can eat rice and lentils for months if only I can throw various herbs and spices into it, can I do that? Alternatively, if I go the other way, I can track pretty much everything I eat and do, but tracking every pinch of cinnamon or thyme might be too difficult or tedious to keep up on. Are spices ok, or potential triggers/allergens?

When I cut out the processed sugar, white flour, artificial flavors,sweeteners, and colors, preservatives, caffeine, and ate primarily low fat, vegan and as organic as possible I noted a marked decrease in the intensity and duration of the headaches. My experience reflects Lost's. By cutting out the white foods, the intensity and duration of the migraines dropped notably. Aerobic exercise and meditation also helped in this regard, as did cutting back on analgesic meds. But--here's the kicker--for me, not a single dietary change resulted in an absolute cure for the migraines. Not cutting out chocolate, not cutting out nuts, nada. The migraines continue despite these and other lifestyle changes, although they have lessened in intensity and duration, as I said above. Some people may benefit, but for many migraineurs, there's no silver bullet. If you're one of them, it may prove pointless to play the "cutting out foods" game. I'd give it a try for a few months, but don't let yourself become overly optimistic as to the results.