Tame Migraine the Delicious Way

By LYDIA LIN

Are you prone to the migraine disease? You are not alone. Current statistics reveal that tens of millions of people are plagued by this health issue in the USA. Countless other people worldwide suffer the same disorder. Research has shown that food triggers play a major role in this debilitating disease, and that following an elimination diet can help reduce the frequency of migraine attacks and the severity of the symptoms. 

With aged beef, sausages, bacon, beans, pickles, many types of cheese, red wine, chocolates and a slew of other foods and drinks on the "no no list", you might ask, "Well then, what's one supposed to eat?" The purpose of this book is to help you recognize the symptoms of this disease, select foods and use substitutes that are less apt to trigger migraines, and prepare
delicious dishes using migraine-safe foods. In this book you will find loads of self-help tips for dealing with migraines as well as tips for using in the kitchen. "Tame Migraine the Delicious Way" includes over 150 recipes and pictures for dishes that you and other members of your family can enjoy. With the simplified steps and clear instructions provided, you might even enjoy the food preparation process and take pride in the appetizing dishes that you are able to turn out.

How about serving yummy potstickers to your family this weekend? By making these delicious bites yourself, you have control over what goes into them. How about serving yummy potstickers to your family this weekend? By making these delicious bites yourself, you have control over what goes into them. Let "Tame Migraine the Delicious Way" show you how to use migraine-safe ingredients for this and the other recipes provided in the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LYDIA LIN
• Release date: Apr 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386841777

LYDIA LIN

Lydia Lin has a background in science and technology. She enjoys reading, writing, music, painting and gardening. She believes that an important part of education is to enlighten people, to help them realize their potentials, and to enable them to appreciate and preserve all that is good about humanity.

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Preface

My struggle with migraine started when I was quite young. As a child, I shunned traveling in automobiles for fear of motion sickness. I was a skinny girl with a weak digestive system. In my early teens, I developed frequent throbbing headaches. On several occasions, the pain was so bad I had to leave the dinner table to throw up and then, immediately afterwards, cope with a bad case of diarrhea. Once, after putting up with the glare of the bright sunlight while sitting in the front passenger seat during a long car ride, I developed a severe headache and became practically blind for a couple days. My doctor diagnosed it as an acute case of glaucoma and treated it successfully. However, he was unable to explanation its cause.

Based on some reading material I came across, I suspected that my headaches were associated with the migraine disease. Some medical research papers indicated that migraine sufferers tend to be prone to strokes. This gave me added incentive to learn about the root cause of migraine attacks and to find out how to prevent them.

It was not until much later that I realized that my headaches had a great deal to do with the foods I ate. Soon afterwards I was able to pinpoint milk and its derivatives as the chief culprits for causing the intestinal problems that accompanied the headaches. Beans, potatoes and miso soup were soon added to the list. I noticed that after removing those items from my diet, I had much less trouble with what I used to complain of as indigestion, and at the same time my headaches occurred much less frequently. This prompted me to diligently search out all the things that could produce a bout of migraine attack in me.

Unfortunately, as my research went on, chocolates, nuts and licorice also had to be relegated to the untouchable category. Over time, I have developed a long list of forbidden foods, which coincides for the most part with the dietary trigger tables provided nowadays by some migraine research centers. Indeed, there is a host of delicious foods from every food category that is taboo for migraineurs. However, before you (assuming you are a fellow migraineur) start to feel doomed, take heart. There are still a great variety of delectable foods out there that are safe to eat. By knowing what those are and how to prepare delicious meals out of them, you could live a migraine-free life and still enjoy good foods.

Keep in mind, though, that incompatible foods are but one of the causes of migraines. If you are prone to stress and excitement, then you would need to learn to manage your emotions and activities as these may also induce a chemical imbalance that results in a migraine attack.

With this book, I hope to help you identify migraine symptoms, enable you to avoid the migraine triggers and show you how to choose and cook foods that are not likely to contribute to migraines. It is also my wish that, by paying attention to your body and realizing how significantly it can be affected by emotional factors, you will develop a healthy and happy attitude toward life and live in harmony with nature and the people around you.

1.  Know Thyself

There are tens of millions individuals in the United States who suffer from migraines that recur at intervals ranging from one day to several years. Some evidence indicates that susceptibility to migraine might be inherited. This happens to be true in my case - My father had it, and later I found out that an aunt of mine was also plagued with migraines. In addition, it is known that women are two or three times as likely as men to have migraines.

In the case of the migraine disease, it is especially true that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Once an attack is underway, even powerful medications such as ergotamine tartrate or triptans may do little for some of the sufferers. There are also several preventive medicines approved by the FDA, notably the beta-blocker drug, propanolol (Inderal). Personally, I prefer not to resort to medication unless absolutely necessary, as most medicines are associated with a number of undesirable short-term and/or long-term side effects. Therefore, the strategy emphasized in this book is one of avoidance - Avoid the foods and things that may detonate a migraine attack in you.

If you are really determined to secure total freedom from migraines, the first thing you will need to do is to find out what causes an onset of attack in you. The fact is that no one knows you better than you yourself. You are the best person to monitor your own reactions to the various migraine trigger factors. The second step, of course, is to do everything you can to eliminate those factors in order to prevent future attacks. The good news is: You can drastically reduce the number of migraine attacks by identifying and minimizing or eliminating the trigger factors.

1.1  Do You Have Migraines?

Dealing with migraines starts with identifying the condition. Many people who suffer from migraines do not know that their headache is linked to a specific illness that has a name and that is in a class of its own.

Headaches from migraines are among the most devastating types of headaches. The severe pain usually occurs only on one side of the head, but sometimes it may move to the other side, or you may feel it on both sides of the head. If you are not a migraineur, it would be difficult for you to imagine the debilitating effects of a migraine attack. The experience can be so atrocious that some migraine sufferers develop a fear of the next attack. The commonly cited symptoms of migraines presented in this section may help you determine whether your headache is due to migraine. Not all symptoms may be present in every attack, and different people may experience varying degrees of these discomforts. Often, non-pain visual symptoms occur in the early stage of an attack and serve as an announcement of the bad news.

In an uncommon variation of the migraine known as optic migraine, pain does not follow the visual symptoms. Once while I was working at my computer, a Z shaped thing suddenly started to zing in and out in front of my eyes. I turned my eyes away from the monitor screen, but the pulsating zigzag shape would not go away. When I called my ophthalmologist to make an appointment, the nurse answering the phone told me this was a typical precursor of migraine. She said that the eye doctor would be of little help to me and that I should prepare for a really bad headache. I closed my eyes and waited with apprehension. After a half hour, the optical image disappeared. And, thank heavens, no headache followed. I had what some call an ocular migraine.

Visual Problems

Classic migraines are usually preceded by visual disturbances. You might see wavy, flashing lines, flashes of a blue dot or a bright spot or dark discs surrounded by glaring halos. This aura could last from 15 to 30 minutes. You might feel that one eyeball is somewhat swollen and its cornea is scraping against the eyelid. When you sense such a fullness or grittiness in your eyes, it would be best to rest your eyes by gently closing them.

When migraine strikes, the pupil of one eye might be dilated and appear much larger than the other pupil. Some people experience blurred vision or temporary blindness. See your doctor if the symptoms are severe. As a stroke might be mistaken for migraine, it is advisable to be checked by a healthcare professional in order to rule out this possibility.

Wooziness or Vertigo

Before the pain of the headache sets in, you might feel dizzy and out of sorts. You might even experience a case of vertigo, which is a sudden spinning sensation that could cause you to fall down as you instinctively react to the perceived motion and, as a result, end in an over-correction.

Pain

In the early stage of a migraine attack, you might sense a hollowness in the head and feel as though you are not inside yourself but floating somewhere in space. This might be accompanied by a vague, dull pain.

As the migraine develops, the strange sensation turns into severe pain. Typically, the pain is on one side of the head and around the eyebrows. With some sufferers, it migrates to the back of the head. The piercing or throbbing pain characteristic of this type of headaches may last hours or days. Some sufferers experience an impulsive desire to crack their skull open in order to release the tremendous pressure they feel are building up inside.

Moving around makes you feel worse. Even turning your head adds to the pain. You just want to go to a dark, quiet room and lie down under a warm blanket.

Numbness

Sometimes, the migraine is accompanied by numbness in your face, hand or foot on one side of the body. In addition, your hands and feet might feel cold.

As such numbness often occur in a stroke patient, it is important to do some tests to rule out the possibility that you are having a stroke. One simple test that you can perform yourself involves looking in a mirror and smiling. If only one corner of your mouth is drawn to the side, it's likely you have a stroke and should get emergency help immediately. If there is another person with you, he or she should ask you to say your name and address, and make sure you can give the correct answers in clear and coherent speech.

Ringing in the Ear (Tinnitus)

During a migraine attack, one or both of your ears might hear a high-pitched noise coming form nowhere. Applying finger pressure to the slightly recessed areas just in front of your ears might help alleviate this problem. A severe case of prolonged tinnitus requires the physician's attention as it could have been caused by high blood pressure or certain damage to the auditory nerves. You might also experience other abnormal sensations in the ears, such as a fullness or the feeling of a moth fluttering inside the ear canals.

Sensitivity to Light, Noise, Tastes, Smells, Feels

Light and noises intensify the agony of a headache associated with migraines. In fact, bright lights and loud noises can often trigger a migraine attack. In addition, the flickering of the magnetic ballast fluorescent lighting used s in schools, offices and supermarkets are known to trigger a silent migraine. I myself have experienced this type of ocular migraine in a supermarket on a couple occasions. Barely had I stepped into the store than the vision of my left eye was partially blocked by a flashing, zinging bright zigzag pattern. I managed to finish the grocery shopping, stopping frequently to close my eyes briefly. By the time I got to the cashiers (in about 30 minutes), the problem went away on its own. No headache followed, and I was thankful. If you have frequent ocular migraines, you might look into getting yourself a pair of tinted eyeglasses especially formulated to address this issue.

Some people nauseate when they smell or eat certain foods while they have a migraine attack. Eggs are particularly suspect. It is also well known that strong odors can aggravate an existing headache. Many people report getting a migraine attack from wearing or smelling perfume.

Constipation and Diarrhea

Disturbance of the digestive system is common in the early stages of the migraine attack. You might feel a tenderness in the abdomen. You might have constipation or diarrhea, or one followed by the other. Excessive belching can be an early warning signal of migraines. You might have dry mouth and bad breath; you might even feel as though you could spit fire (like a Medieval dragon).

The gastrointestinal condition may lead to dizziness or fainting spells. As blood pools in the organs in the abdomen, the decreased blood flow to your brains may cause dizziness.

Nausea, Vomiting and Skin Pallor

An overactive nervous system could induce a general distaste for food and culminate in vomiting. You might feel a little better after throwing up. Your face might look pale. You might yawn more frequently than usual.

Nasal Stuffiness

You might have nasal stuffiness accompanied by a slight fever and tearing and redness of one eye. Some people experience difficulty in breathing, which requires the doctor's attention.

Increased Urination

You might feel the need to void often. This is another mechanism by which your body attempts to get rid of the toxins that induced the migraines. It is advisable to drink an adequate amount of water to help the cleansing process.

Rashes

Blotchy patches or rashes could appear on your skin. With some people, this may be due to incompatible foods. It is important not to scratch the irritated skin; scratching will make it worse. Your doctor should be able to prescribe an ointment to alleviate the itch. It may also help to soak the affected are in a solution of baking soda, Epsom salt or sea salt (about 1 cup in a half-filled bathtub).

1.2 It's All in Your Nerves

Migraine is a complex disorder with genetic and environmental elements, and to date there is not yet a complete understanding of the physiology of this disease. This disorder appears to involve many parts of our body, including the nerves, the cranial blood vessels, the cerebral arteries, the endocrines, the immune system, the digestive system, the ocular system, the vestibular system and the skin.

The most prominent symptom of the migraine disease is a characteristic headache. Until recently migraines were thought to be mainly due to abnormalities of blood vessels in the head. The following simple model is often cited to describe the headache. A trigger factor causes the blood platelets to clump in the arteries and release neurochemicals such as serotonin. The first reaction of the brain arteries to these chemicals is to contract. It is in this vessel-narrowing phase that some migraine sufferers experience various forms of visual disturbances.

The artery constriction is followed by an influx of blood to reduce inflammation and to remove any toxins, much like the swelling accompanying a skin infection. Migraineurs appear to have increased sensitivity in nerves that relay pain messages while at the same time they have a reduced level of pain-relieving chemicals in the brain. The excessive dilation of the arteries coupled with the reduced pain threshold produces extreme pain. 

The redistribution of body fluid could well be the cause of stuffed nose and dry stools. In addition, increased activities in the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems might result in vomiting and diarrhea, which are but two other natural means for cleansing the system.

As gastrointestinal symptoms often accompany a migraine attack, it makes one wonder whether migraine is the cause or the effect of the disturbance in the digestive system. In fact, the gut-brain connection is now recognized by the medical field, and our guts are viewed as our second brain. Studies have shown that people with digestive or gastrointestinal disorders are more likely to suffer from migraines. The organs in our body are in constant communication with our brains via the nervous system, the endocrine system and the immune system. When the gastrointestinal system is irritated, the brain receives the distress signals and reacts accordingly. It may release neurochemicals that enable fluid to rush into the bloodstream in an attempt to clear out any toxins or to offset any imbalance in pH. A headache results from the dilated cranial blood vessel or artery. It should also not be difficult for us to visualize how the nearby nerves could send the alarm to the other parts of the body and cause them to react in various ways.

The fact that there are the so-called silent migraines, marked by the absence of a headache, indicates that this disease might not have a vascular origin. Such migraines produce visual disturbances and/or other neurological problems, such as diarrhea, fainting spells or vertigo.

Nowadays doctors tend to believe that migraine starts with an underlying central nervous system disorder. A host of stimuli, including emotional stress and hormonal activity, can trigger this disorder and set off a series of neurological and biochemical processes. Some of these activities can affect the brain's vascular system and result in the debilitating headache. Others may adversely affect the other organs and physiological functions.

With the garden variety of migraines, the symptoms preceding the nasty headache are similar to those of food poisoning. It is interesting why some people exhibit such strong reactions to the trigger factors while others seem immune to them. One view is that people who are prone to migraines lack the enzymes necessary to break down certain chemicals that we ingest from foods, such as tyramine, histamine, arginine, tannin and lactic acid. The accumulation of such low pH chemicals results in an acid overload on the body. Another view is based on the observation that there is a prevalence of migraine in people suffering from inflammable bowel syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or celiac disease. Studies have shown that pro-inflammatory immune responses are enhanced in such patients. It is believed that these patients have an abnormally high intestinal permeability, which permits lipopolysaccharides (LPS) to leak from the intestines into the blood stream. They have what's called a leaky gut, and it is possible that the pro-inflammatory responses in these patients occur on the nociceptors of the trigeminal nerve to produce a headache.

Currently there is a vast amount of information available about the migraine disease. Besides letting our doctors help us in severe cases, it will behoove us to read up on related literature from reputable and reliable sources to keep up with the latest developments in the understanding, preventive measures and treatment options for this disease.

It truly amazes me to watch some people eat just about anything with absolute impunity. Also, I could never imagine putting myself on a wild roller coaster ride that turns one's stomach inside out. We migraineurs seem to have extra sensitive nerves, and we are more sensitive to an imbalance in the amount of the minerals circulating in the blood (such as calcium and magnesium), certain biogenic amines in the foods that we eat, toxins produced by bad bacteria in the digestive system, changes in the hormone levels as well as stress-induced neurotransmitter changes in the brain. Migraineurs often suffer in silence. We sit through a meeting with a pounding headache; we fumble through the dinner preparation; we go to bed with our loved one while not really feeling up to it. And when we complain of an intolerable noise, bright light, odor or a dizzying car ride, the normal people might dismiss it by saying, It's all in your head. Well, they would be correct if they had changed the comment to: It's all in your nerves.

1.3 Migraine Trigger Factors

In view that the migraine disease involves so many different contributing factors, it is not an easy task to take note and pin down your own trigger factors and also steer clear of them. Following is a list of a number of commonly reported migraine triggers accompanied by suggestions for ways to avoid them. One thing to keep in mind: Divide and conquer; never allow these trigger factors to work in concert against you. You will take migraine by the horns and subdue it. Yes, you can.

Incompatible Foods

The ancient Chinese were wise to have made this observation: Diseases enter through the mouth. In fact, many foods have been blamed for bringing on migraines. Keep in mind that, of all the migraine triggers, your food intake plays a major role. It is also the one over which you have some degree of control.

The fact is that our body is populated by a large community of microorganisms, many of which are beneficial, while some are quite harmful. The microorganisms living in the digestive tracts are referred to collectively as the gut flora or the gastrointestinal microbiota. They are responsible for fermenting dietary fiber in the large intestines into short-chain fatty acids that are easier for the body to absorb, for synthesizing vitamin B and vitamin K, for serving as catalysts in other metabolism functions, and for initiating certain inflammatory and autoimmune problems.

In a healthy individual, the beneficial bacteria suppress the bad ones. Antibiotics, while effective against infectious diseases, can change the composition and functions of the gut flora to produce adverse effects. They kill the good as well as the bad bacteria. Indeed some people have reported that they developed irritable bowel disease after taking a course of antibiotics for some other illness. Many find it helpful to take a probiotic supplement a short time after taking a dose of the antibiotics.

Even if the food we eat does not contain toxins at the outset, the food-processing effected by the microorganisms within our gastrointestinal system could generate toxic or otherwise harmful products. In particular, the duodenum and the small intestine should be free of bacteria. When there is bacteria overload in the small intestines and fermentation takes place, all sorts of problems may arise, including malabsorption, headache, diarrhea and chronic fatigue syndrome.

In view of the fact that foods and drinks can profoundly affect our well-being, it is not surprising that studies have found an elimination diet to be effective in treating irritable bowel conditions as well as what is called dietary migraines. Following is a list of the commonly cited dietary culprits for migraineurs. To avoid these food items, it will help to read the labels on food packages and also check on the Internet the chemical contents in the various types of foods that you