Possible Cause of Migraines
Mr.Smartypants
A Notmilk reader asked, "I slipped and ate mango ice
cream and it was delicious, but now I have a migraine.
Could there be a connection?"
Well...it's not the mango, unless she has also been
requesting three shots of tequila in each mango marguerita!
The food industry is not interested in financing research
demonstrating a relationship between food consumption and
migraine headaches.
The pharmaceutical industry has zero motivation in finding
a food-related cause of migraines. They are happy to sell
drugs which might relieve symptoms, but a simple cure
such as eliminating the trigger would not do their
bottom line any good.
So, expensive studies with human subjects are rare.
Panminerva Medica is a European journal which publishes
studies of internal medicine using human subjects.
In 2002, Panminerva Medica (Mar;44(1):27-31) published
an article titled:
Food and headache attacks.
A comparison of patients with migraine and tension-type headache.
From the study abstract:
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Three hundred and nine patients were involved in the study...
"RESULTS: Approximately one third of the patients reported
susceptibility to certain foods...The foods more commonly
reported as headache triggers were alcoholic drinks, chocolate
and cheese.
"CONCLUSIONS: Our study suggests that foods may trigger not
only migraine but also tension type headache attacks."
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
In 1989, The Journal of Pediatrics recognized that
dairy products cause head throbbers:
"Dairy products may play a major role in
the development of... migraine headaches."
- Pediatrics 1989;84(4):595-603
Caution: The three most common triggers for migraines
are alcohol, cheese, and chocolate. At Notmilk, milk
chocolate is considered to be brown cheese with sugar.
Four pounds of milk are required to produce one pound
of milk chocolate. Ten pounds of milk are required to
make one pound of hard cheese.
Remove the trigger and those migraines just might
disappear.
Robert Cohen
http://www.notmilk.com