Attack Your Migraine With Brain Freeze

I won't say "I told you so." But I will say that my article, 6 Ways To Attack Your Migraine Or Give You Brain Freeze posted in November 2009 touted eating ice cream as a possible way to provide relief from migraine.


See this excerpt from The Seattle Times, 4/16/11;


People's Pharmacy: Ice-cream cure for migraines

By Joe Graedon and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D.

Syndicated columnists

Q: You recently wrote about an ice-cream cure for a migraine. I am a lifetime sufferer. While in the throes of a multiday migraine, I ate ice cream too fast and got "brain freeze." My migraine disappeared. This has been my best remedy for about 20 years now, and I hope it will work for someone else.

A: Doctors call brain freeze sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia. It can be very painful. It occurs when very cold foods or beverages like slushies or ice cream numb the nerves in the roof of the mouth.

So, feel free to have your ice cream. In fact, you have my permission to have an extra scoop!  I hope it makes you feel better.

 

Elimination Of Food Migraine Triggers

We can eliminate some of our most common migraine triggers, by keeping track of what we eat. Using an elimination diet is the very best way to determine the food triggers of your migraine attacks. The basis of this diet, is to eliminate all possible foods and then, add foods back one at a time. As you add items to your diet, you will find the foods that cause you problems. Food triggers are not all the same for every migraine sufferer. Here are three things you can use to help you determine your food triggers and keep track of them;  * Note ~ There are a lot of links in this post. Take the time to check them out. You'll be glad you did.

Keep a diary of what you eat every day. This can help you identify problem foods.

• You can keep an online diary, create charts and lists of triggers at www.migraineliving.com
• The Online Diary at www.my-diary.org
• Penzu is an online diary and journal website at penzu.com
• Open Diary is another online diary or blog site, www.opendiary.com 
• You can also use Twitter to log your food intake. See this article from my technology website Plain Answers to Geek Questions - Using Twitter To Keep A Diary.
• Use computer software like Journler, LifeJournal, MacJournal, or The Journal

Learn about elimination diet by reading about it. The following is not an exhaustive list. There are other good books out there as well.

• Heal Your Headache: The 1-2-3 Program for Taking Charge of Your Pain by Dr. David Buchholz 
• The Elimination Diet Cookbook: A 28-Day Plan for Detecting Allergies by Jill Carter and Allison  Edwards.
• Food Allergies and Food Intolerance: The Complete Guide to Their Identification and Treatment  by Jonathan Brostoff M.D., Linda Gamlin.
• Allergy-free Cooking: How To Survive The Elimination Diet And Eat Happily Ever After  by Eileen Rhude Yoder

Visit web sites that provide migraine information for determining your triggers and how to get rid of them.

• Heidi Gunderson has a cookbook (Go Here) and a blog called Migraine-Free Cooking filled with wonderful recipes that follow an elimination diet plan.
• Headache and Migraine News at http://headacheandmigrainenews.com is produced by James Cottrill, and provides daily news on migraine medicine.
• Take a look at trigger information at mymigraineconnection.com a part of healthcentral.com.
• Visit Somebody Heal Me, by Diana Lee for informative articles on causes and remedies.

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Related Articles

• Stress, Diet, and searching for Triggers (headacheandmigrainenews.com)
• What are food allergies? (fitnesstipsforlife.com)
• Migraine: Don't Pull The Trigger (againstthegraine.blogspot.com)

Migraine: Don't Pull the Trigger

I am constantly at war with my migraine triggers. I guess they are called "triggers" because I may as well be pointing a gun at my head. My triggers are like Russian roulette, only worse... I never know how many bullets are in the gun.

There are times when I can have onions on my burger and not be affected at all. Onions are one of my triggers, but I love them, and feel that they are what makes the burger a burger. Other times they hit me right behind the left eye. There is no way to know. Sometimes it can take up to three days, before I feel the impact. Other times, it is immediate.

A few years ago, I read the book, Heal Your Headache The 1,2,3 Program, by David Buckholz, M.D., in which he talked about how we each have a trigger tank. That tank is sometimes running on low, and other times, it is filled to the top. If the tank is low, a trigger may or may not push it over the line. Some triggers may immediately make the tank overflow, causing a migraine. Everyone has a different size tank. People may have the same triggers, but the fill-line level of the tank may be different.

Onions are a migraine trigger of mine that sometimes cause me problems, while wintergreen is a trigger that ALWAYS hits me where it hurts (the head, of course). Just the smell of wintergreen will push me into what I call "a Gran Mal" migraine.

I found it beneficial to try an elimination diet, in order to determine my food triggers. I found that my triggers include onions, hot peppers and other nightshades, citrus, fresh bread, aged cheese, and processed or aged meats. It is important for me to stay clear of any of these triggers.

It is difficult because I like each of those foods, but they obviously do not like me.
By eating any of these trigger foods, I am putting bullets in the gun.