Migraine Headaches

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