Foods: some of the more well-known offenders on the migraine food trigger list are: chocolate, nuts, cheese, cured meats, refined sugar, and sugar substitutes.
There are more – the migraine sufferers can keep a food diary of what they ate and drank prior to an attack, compare it to their migraine diary, and draw conclusions. Ask yourself a first question: how closely am I following a moderate, balanced organic whole foods plant-based diet?
Migraines keep you on your toes – not only do you need to be aware of what foods contribute to triggering an attack, but you also need to be aware of the trigger effects of when and how much you eat and drink!
Fear not! There are plenty of equally palate-satisfying substitutes out there that are less likely to trigger an attack. Yes, your palate will adapt.
If you weren’t a foodie to begin with, you are in for a treat as you try out several substitute recipes – there are countless ones out on the Internet, prepared by very talented chefs. You will discover you have an embarrassment of riches.
Do you like the crunch of nuts? Almonds are probably the least fatty, and therefore less likely to irritate your gallbladder, which Asian medicine teaches us is related to migraine headaches. Humor them – try it out. What have you got to lose except a little time and migraines?
I was seated with a friend at a very popular and trendy restaurant, waiting for our dessert – Strawberries Stroganoff, which was waiting for us at the service table. The waiter waived around an outsized pepper mill, meant to impress the diners at the next table with a few grinds of pepper over their fresh salad, when an incoming breeze wafted the pepper over to our strawberry cups. The waiter prepared to toss our desserts when happily we asked him to serve them to us anyway, to see what it tasted like. The pepper combined with the fresh strawberries and topping was delicious.
Is chocolate a favorite food, but a trigger for you? Try preparing your own truffles with carob instead, mixed with a variety of spices and pepper (yes, freshly ground pepper!), sweetened with stevia or pureed medjool dates. See if that doesn’t satisfy your craving.
Ever heard of the expression “to develop a taste?” Your body will teach you. If you find that you unlearn your craving for a certain trigger food by replacing it with a similar food that distracts your taste buds and turns into a favorite replacement and – bonus! – you find your migraines less painful or frequent – your body will remember that you felt better.
“Cheese” as a migraine trigger usually refers to the dry, hard, salty, sharp cheeses. There are workshops to teach how to prepare remarkably tasty vegan or lighter cheeses. Add fresh herbs from the window box on your balcony where you planted a few culinary herbs to the creamy cheeses (less concentrated and less salty), and you will become a fan.
I really enjoy the crunch of French fries, but avoided them most of the time because of the deep frying process. Happily, there are now air fryers. Now, we eat fries a lot more often with a homemade tomato ketchup recipe prepared without salt and sweetened with puréed dates.
If you aren’t enthusiastic about new recipes, surely you will have family or friends who are only too happy to serve as Guinea pigs to taste your experiments and who will enjoy them.
Find a foodie friend or family member to try to develop some of these copycat recipes for you if you are simply too debilitated by migraines. You did not get where you are overnight and finding more pain relief is a step-by-step process.
More frequent congenial social gatherings will contribute even further to your journey of developing more pain relief.
