migraine triggers

24 February 2021

Does Migraine Change the way You Eat?

Does migraine change your diet?

Now wait a minute. I don’t just mean that you don’t drink wine because you’re afraid that it might trigger an attack. I mean, does migraine itself somehow change your food choices – maybe unconsciously? In other words – maybe migraine itself changes your diet, not just that you change your diet because of migraine.

Yes, there’s a lot more to this than what we normally discuss. And a review published in the journal Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment has raised a lot of interesting questions, even though we don’t have a lot of answers yet.

Of course we know that many people avoid certain foods because they might trigger attacks. But then there are more curious food studies. Take, for example, chocolate.

Chocolate was once a well-known “trigger”. But after various studies, it seems that it may actually trigger attacks only in rare cases. How can that be? So many people complain of headaches after eating chocolate! Well, the answer seems to be that an oncoming migraine attack sometimes comes along with a craving for chocolate. So, someone without a headache eats chocolate, and then gets a headache – but the headache was the cause of the chocolate, not the other way around!

Or, maybe there are food choices related to migraine. Such as, you may be taking a medication that causes weight gain, and so you start choosing food that you think will not cause more weight gain.

Maybe your body knows it needs salt – so you choose more salty foods. Or there is some kind of deficiency that your body is somehow trying to fix, and it’s related to or caused by migraine itself.

Besides specific food choices, there may also be changes in your decision about food portions. Or, as you probably know, many migraine patients are much more careful about their eating schedules – eating at the same time every day.

Maybe you feel a migraine coming on, and you commonly reach for this food. Why? Is it a craving? Or a decision based on evidence? (Either one could be good or bad – depending on the reason for the craving, the validity of the evidence, and what you reach for!)

This is a fascinating paper that you can delve into for yourself if you would like – A Bidirectional View of Migraine and Diet Relationship. But I would like you to start thinking about what the relationship may be between your migraine and your food choices. And, better yet, I would like you to comment!

Of course we’re not aware of unconscious choices, unless we or someone else notices a pattern over time. But what have you noticed? Has your diet changed because of migraine? Why? For example:

I heard that this diet has helped many people with migraine.
I avoid x because it seems to trigger migraine attacks.
I can’t eat x because of the medication I take.
I have a comorbid condition that affects my diet choices.
I’m simply more aware of my diet because of migraine, and so I eat healthier, or cook for myself more.
I’m exhausted because of migraine, so I choose simpler and easier meals.
I find I often crave x.
I have less of an appetite because of migraine.
Other.

Let’s compare notes!

3 September 2020

Women with Migraine: Different Symptoms?

James Discoveries & Stats 0

So we all know that the risk of migraine is higher in women, and that the difference is often blamed on hormones (although it’s likely more complex than that). But what about symptoms? Do women experience different symptoms than men?

A study published last year is saying “Yes”. Here are some of things that seems to be worse/more intense for women than for men:

Attacks tend to last longer
Nausea/vomiting
Vertigo/dizziness
Sensitivity to odours (osmophobia)
Allodynia
Higher disability from migraine (based on the MIDAS test)

As mentioned above, women were more sensitive to smells during an attack. Interestingly, they were also more likely to have an attack triggered by odours.

There were also more comorbid conditions – conditions that tend to go along with migraine – in the female group. Depression and allergy were the ones that stood out.

You might ask, because of the common hormonal hypothesis, whether these differences go away after menopause. The answer is mostly no. The differences were still significant, with the exception of nausea. After menopause, the nausea was about the same in both male and female groups.

Of course, these are more descriptions of the attacks. Attack frequency does tend to be less after menopause, although that is not always the case.

What about the Men?

So what items were more significant in the male group? Although generally other factors were the same in both groups, or someone worse for the women, one trigger stood out in the male group. Excessive sleep was more likely to trigger an attack for the men.

Of course this study is not saying that Emily’s migraine attacks are necessarily worse than Jacob’s, but there is a general trend here. We’re fighting against migraine for everyone. However, it’s good to know the areas in which the women tend to suffer more, because it can lead to better understanding and treatment.

To read the full study and the comments of the authors, click here: Sex Differences of Migraine: Results of a Nationwide Home-based Study in Turkey

21 October 2019

Are We “Counting” Migraine Attacks Wrong? (podcast)

James Discoveries & Stats, Information, Podcast 1

A podcast about an interesting new study that may begin to change the way we calculate the number of “migraine attacks” we get in a given period. Find out why this is important to future research, and to your current understanding of your personal migraine attacks.

[display_podcast]

You can read the full study here: What constitutes a migraine attack? -A counting clinician’s perspective.

7 October 2016

FitBit and Migraine

James News, Tips 0

The easier it becomes to track information, the more we want to do it. Although some people prefer to avoid the hassle, there are a growing number who are tracking as much health information as possible using their smart phone, and sometimes an additional device such as FitBit.

Apps such as Curelator and Migraine Buddy have helped many migraine patients track detailed information. It’s not that we want to look back and see how painful life has been over the past 30 days. It’s a way to find triggers, and possible solutions, to migraine attacks.

FitBit is one example of an “activity tracker”. It tracks things like how many calories you’re burning, how active you are in general, quality of sleep, the food you eat, heart rate, and more. As you may imagine, knowing and controlling your overall health can have a huge impact on your migraine symptoms. Here’s a promotional video for a recent incarnation of FitBit:

Using Power Sync for Fitbit, you can even sync FitBit data to your Apple Health data.

Kelley Nunn, blogger at My Migraine Brain, has used FitBit (read a bit about her tracking system here). Vera Sweeney, another blogger, has also written a little about using (and hiding!) FitBit.

The Mayo Clinic and Allergan will be working together with Second Opinion Health to test the use of FitBit and the Migraine Alert app (an upcoming app not yet available to the general public) to predict migraine attacks.

To find out more about the trial (which as I write it not yet open to participants), see Individualized Prediction of Migraine Attacks Using a Mobile Phone App and Fitbit (Migraine Alert).

You can request to try out Migraine Alert – just watch the video below for more information (it’s open to those with episodic migraine only at this point).

How about you? Do you use health tracking with your smart phone? Has it helped?

11 January 2016

Discover the Real Truth about Your Migraine Triggers

James Resources 0

An increasing number of people are discovering new things about their triggers, using a simple but very unique app.

Many of us – maybe even most of us – could give a list of things that trigger our migraine attacks. But sometimes knowing the list makes us forget just how complex migraine triggers can be – and so we miss some of the subtle things that could be saving us a lot of pain.

And that’s why the Curelator app was developed by Dr. Alec Mian and his team.

How Curelator Works

Curelator is the migraine diary you always wish you had had. It’s simple, but it uses data in a powerful way to give you actually useful information.

First, it asks you some basic questions (this is optional, but obviously the more information you input, the more useful the reports will be at the end). Then, every day you take a few minutes (maybe 2 or 3 minutes once you understand the system) to enter basic information about your day. Were you exposed to any typical triggers? What symptoms did you experience? What treatments did you use?

You need to do this regularly for 2-3 months (whether you experience a migraine attack or not) so that Curelator can get a good overview of your symptoms, medications, possible triggers, and treatments.

Now as it is, this gives you great data on the frequency and duration of your migraine and headache attacks. But you can get a subscription which will give you much more powerful information. (At the end I’ll give you a tip to save some money on the prescription.)

With the subscription, you’ll be able to see “trigger maps” and “protector maps”. You can see an example of a trigger map to the right.

According to the data this person has entered, bright lights, neck pain and soft drinks are highly associated with their migraine attacks, and so they are likely triggers. Anxiety, on the other hand, just has a vague association. She might want to check again in a couple of months to see if things have changed.

She’ll also see a similar map showing things that are probably not triggers, and also a map of things that seem to be “protectors” – when she’s exposed to these things, she’s actually less likely to have an attack.

Remember that list in your head? There may be one or two things on there you’ve been generally avoiding for years, and it may turn out that you’re avoiding them for no reason.

Interesting Findings

Curelator had a number of testers last year (I was one of them), and some interesting discoveries were made. For example, you know how everyone tells you to avoid caffeine and chocolate? Here’s the raw data. Out of 150 patients, caffeine only seemed to be a trigger for 2%. And chocolate? All right, a little higher – almost 7%. But that’s all! In fact, for over 9%, chocolate actually seemed to fight migraine (bring it on!).

The nice thing about Curelator is that it isn’t biased by past experience, or what a doctor says – it just calculates the cold, hard, numbers. So you just may discover some unexpected facts yourself.

A Few More Things You Need to Know

I know this is a long article, but it’s worth the time to understand this app and what it can do for you.

Curelator is backed by an advisory board with some big names in the world of migraine treatment and research. This is not a fly by night group, but people who have spent a good part of their lives helping real migraine patients. When they see a chance to reduce medications and improve health, that’s what they’re all about.

Now, you also wanted to know how to save some money. As I mentioned, there is a free version of the app which does track your headache and/or migraine attacks (cluster headache too). The app needs 45-90 days to get enough data (by the way, the app is typically for people experiencing 2 or more headache and/or migraine attacks per month). What you do is get the free version and use it for three months, and get a good set of data first. Then subscribe to get your maps. Now you have 6 months to confirm the data or see if it discovers more. That essentially gives you 9 months of information instead of 6.

Once you have the data, stop and think about it, or talk to a friend about it. You’re likely to discover some things you weren’t aware of before. This article from the National Headache Foundation about Curelator provides some fascinating examples of how a “trigger” may turn into a “protector”, for example.

Curelator is hoping to come out with some more useful features in the future, so stay tuned!

Meanwhile, get the app now! (And by the way, if you want an Android app, click the link on this page to let them know you’re interested and to be updated when it’s available)