Food intolerance

The common wisdom when it comes to finding your food triggers is to try eliminating one or two from your diet, one at a time.  But with so many possible triggers, and some so hard to eliminate, this can be a challenging prospect.  What if you could get a simple test that immediately identified which foods were triggering a migraine attack?

A recent trial investigated intolerance testing, which identifies the presence of immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies in the blood.  This test has not received huge support from the medical community, because there’s little evidence that it’s a reliable test.

However, in the recent trial of 61 people with moderate to severe migraines, according to the test most patients had one intolerance or another.  When changes were made in people’s diets as a result, 80% said there was some improvement.  Over 60% tried reintroducing the problems foods, only to find their migraine attacks returned.

What foods were people intolerant to?  It may surprise you.  The most common was cow’s milk, followed by yeast, egg white, egg yolk, wheat, gluten and corn.  Imagine trying to cut some of these things out of your diet for a few weeks – not so easy.

This was a pilot study – better trials need to be done.  You can read more about the study in the article An appetite for migraine?, or check out an overview of allergy and intolerance tests at WebMD.