Another Sugar-Migraine Link
A new study is once again linking migraine and sugar – and yes, there’s something you can do about it.
We’ve talked a lot about the link between migraine and eating, in particular, sugar and refined grains. But how your body responds to foods is actually very complex, so there’s a lot more to say.
A diet that gives you a lot of spikes in sugar certainly seems to trigger more migraine attacks. For example, liquid sugar – drinking a lot of juice or carbonated sugary beverages, for example.
The study recently posted in BMC Neurology, entitled The potential impact of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome on migraine headache characteristics, investigates various indications that your body may not be handling sugar properly.
Insulin Resistance
The study talked a lot about “insulin resistance”. Imagine it this way. There’s a lumber mill out in the forest, and trees are being cut down and made into planks for building houses, and so on. I might add that this is a very sustainable operation, and trees are being replanted and habitats protected. 🙂
The lumber mill salesman goes into the city with his planks and sells them to all the people, and the people go into action, building houses using wood for fuel and making little toys and whatever else they do with the wood. Wood is amazing.
But after a while, the lumberjack starts getting a little greedy and starts cutting down more and more trees. The lumber mill is having trouble keeping up, but it’s giving a lot of work to the salesman. The salesman, also getting greedy, is in the city constantly, shouting to all his clients about what they could do with more and more and more wood! More salesmen are trained for the “growing market”.
After buying the wood for a while, and storing the extra in the garage, the people in the city get fed up. They have too much wood, the salesman is simply annoying – they’re done. They get so fed up, they call the police on the salesman, put out a restraining order, and start putting up posters warning everyone to stop buying from this guy.
You can understand their concerns – but now a system that was working well is completely broken. A very useful system is ending up with unused wood gathering dust in the garage, and at the same time a supply-chain problem. But now the salesmen have too much wood – so the storehouses are getting full of wood, that’s simply not being used for anything.
Now, imagine that the wood is food you eat with sugar. It’s processed by the body, and a salesman – let’s call him Mr. Insulin – gets the sugar to the city (or perhaps stores some of the wood properly in the lumber storehouse – like the liver, for example). The city (cities) is like your cells.
Sometimes, for various reasons, the cells can become “resistant” to the salesman, Mr. Insulin. The salesman gets more aggressive – in fact, more salesmen are trained at the Pancreas School of Insulin, because obviously, something isn’t working. But more salesmen aren’t helping.
For a while, the sales trucks are full of wood, but eventually there’s too much wood (sugar) for the insulin. The body is simply getting overwhelmed.
The excess sugar is stored in the storehouses – we call it “fat”, and you might see this right around your waist.
Insulin Resistance and Migraine
With the system broken, you end up with all kinds of problems. Diabetes…. it may cause problems in the brain – dementia – and … migraine?
This particular study, as you may guess, did find a link between insulin resistance and migraine, as well as metabolic syndrome and migraine. Metabolic syndrome is defined by the Mayo Clinic as “a cluster of conditions that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes. These conditions include increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels.”
Researchers looked at various indications of metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance. For example, fat around the waist. Yes, more likely in the migraine group. Insulin resistance? More likely in a migraine patient. Higher levels of insulin? Yes. Metabolic syndrome? Same thing.
And looking at the situation in reverse, migraine patients with insulin resistance were more likely to have worse migraine disease – more disability, worse attacks, and so on. Metabolic syndrome, in this case, was not as closely related to worse attacks.
Now we need to remember that there are a number of things that can cause “supply chain” issues in the body. Think of our lumber mill. Maybe one city just tends to build houses more slowly and carefully. Maybe the lumberjack gets a more efficient chainsaw. Maybe the weather is bad for a season.
In the same way, problems people with certain genetics or medical histories – or family medical histories – may be more susceptible to “supply chain” problems.
This study doesn’t show that insulin resistance causes migraine, but it is another clue (along with many other studies) that general health should help fight against migraine.
If you’re tempted to go and spend a fortune on that new exercise equipment, or that pill promising to “melt” fat around your waistline, think twice. Before getting to “next level” options, you have the power to make a huge difference in your own health.
That’s right – we’re back to exercise and diet.
Consider “quitting sugar” (that is, drastically reducing the added sugars and refined grains in your diet). For tips, see How To Quit Sugar (1) and How To Quit Sugar (2). If you spend most of your time in a chair, start by adding some movement to your day. In other words, take small steps to get your body moving. This does not mean going from the armchair to 6 hours at the gym tomorrow. Small steps, but consistent, regular steps.
For more information, check out Insulin Resistance and Diabetes from the CDC and Insulin Resistance & Prediabetes from the NIH. Regarding regulating sugar from the perspective of migraine, a useful resource is The Migraine Miracle: A Sugar-Free, Gluten-Free, Ancestral Diet to Reduce Inflammation and Relieve Your Headaches for Good by neurologist Dr. Josh Turknett.