Is There a Right Migraine Diet?

In treating migraine, medical practitioners always recommend that patients follow a healthy diet coupled with adequate exercise. This is to help maintain the body in its optimum level, to better cope with the symptoms of the disease. Even so, most migraine sufferers wish that their doctors could lay out a meal plan for them to follow to cure the migraine, an effective migraine diet.

Just as there is no cure for migraine, there is also no special migraine diet. However, a healthy diet does exist, one that will make a person feel better and can help prevent certain diseases. This diet, which is also recommended for migraine sufferers, consists mostly of fruits, vegetables, grains, low-fat milk products, lean meat, nuts and beans. In making food choices though, the migraine food triggers should be taken into consideration. Yogurt, nuts and beans have been known to start a migraine attack. If a migraineur has already identified his trigger, it should be left out of his migraine diet.

There are certain foods to avoid too, such as those rich in saturated fats, salt and sugar. Colas, eggs, and cakes belong here. Alcohol is to be shunned as well. For migraineurs, this would not be a difficult thing to do since red wine and beer are common triggers. Some ingredients that are mixed with everyday food have to be eliminated from the diet but this is more difficult to do since they are not visible. These substances are tyramine found in cheeses, nuts, beans and yogurt; nitrates used to preserve meats and found in hotdogs and bacon; MSG, a flavor enhancer commonly used in Chinese dishes, phenylethylamine found in chocolate, garlic and onion.

Determining a food trigger takes time and effort. Migraineurs react to food in different ways. It is possible that one type of food can start an attack in one person while it takes a combination of several to affect another. An easy way of identifying a trigger is to keep a migraine diary recording the foods that were eaten and occurrences of attacks. After several months, the sufferer will be able to see a pattern of the kind of food to avoid. The record will not only identify the triggers, it will also pinpoint if there are other factors also start a migraine, such as skipped meals or menstrual periods. Correlations between triggers and attacks will be made more evident with documentation.

When the relationship between certain kinds of food and migraine has been determined, the sufferer should then try to eliminate these from his diet for several weeks. Food elimination is to be done in a phase by phase process so as not to make abrupt changes in the patient's lifestyle. Further, one has to make sure essential vitamins and minerals are still taken in adequate amounts. Records of food and incidence of attacks should still be kept. Most importantly, this has to be done only after consultation with the physician.

For the migraineur, it is essential not only to eat right but to eat it at the right time and in the right way. This is the secret to finding the right migraine diet.