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Nutritional Needs for Migraines

Mar 28, 2011 | By Howard Chazin
Nutritional Needs for Migraines
Photo Credit Headache image by Friday from Fotolia.com

You may suffer from migraine headaches or know of someone who does. Migraines are common and are often severe. They can keep you from working or doing the activities you enjoy. Although there are many drugs available to treat migraines, scientific evidence suggests that migraines may be affected by your nutritional habits.

Migraines

Migraines are severe headaches with certain characteristics. Classic migraines start with a visual disturbance called an aura and soon after, the pain begins to increase on one side of your head. Common migraines are the same as classic migraines, but they lack the aura. When you have a migraine, you may feel nauseous, dizzy or be sensitive to light or sound. Migraines can be triggered by many things, for example, lacking sleep, forgetting to eat, strains in your neck or facial muscles, or simply because you inherited the tendency to have these types of headaches. There have been many theories of the etiology of migraines and scientists and researchers continue to evolve their understanding of this type of headache.

Triggers and Diet

According to the American Headache Society, there are many nutritional triggers for migraines, including red wine, chocolate, caffeine, artificial sweeteners, monosodium glutamate, tyramine-containing foods such as certain beans, some aged cheeses, processed deli foods that may contain sulfites or nitrates, some herbs and even some vitamins. If you are a migraine headache sufferer who can identify the particular foods that trigger your headaches, you might be controlling your diet trying to eliminate these foods. However, this can be tedious and may not consistently prevent your migraines nor diminish the frequency or severity of them.

There are many other factors that could be the real trigger for that particular headache at that particular moment, such as lack of sleep, fasting or stress, so elimination diets are not recommended by the American Headache Society.

Adults

Medications can help you prevent and treat migraine headaches, but that can be expensive, and many drugs have intolerable side effects. Based on limited data from some clinical trials, feverfew, riboflavin and magnesium may prevent migraines, but the evidence for this so far is limited to adults. A trial at the Department of Medicine, University Hospital, Nottingham, England, in 1988 evaluated feverfew for migraine prevention and noted a decrease in migraine severity and frequency. Scientists at the Department of Neurology, University of Liège in Belgium studied high dose riboflavin, a B vitamin, in patients and recorded a decrease in migraine severity over the course of three months of treatment compared to placebo. Researchers at the New York Headache Center, are examining the effects of magnesium on migraine headaches in adults.

Children and Adolescents

Migraines also occur in children and adolescents but it is more difficult to study them in formal clinical trials. However, a study in the Division of Neurology, at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, noted improvement in migraine severity when children and adolescents with low Coenzyme Q10 were supplemented. Pediatric researchers at the Division of Neurology, Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, note that, "The diet factor in pediatric migraine is frequently neglected in favor of preventive drug therapy." So for children and adolescents, it may be even more important for them to identify their nutritional migraine triggers.

References

Article reviewed by Anita Crone Last updated on: Mar 28, 2011

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