prolific.org

Those of you who have been reading my posts here for some time may remember I used to suffer from migraines quite a bit. If you go through my archives, you’ll see migraine-related entries going back as far as 1998. They started when I was a teenager and they only got worse over the years. I would have at least one attack every month, but there’ve been times in my life where I’d get them every week, or for days on end.

But my most recent attack was 7 months ago. I’ve never gone without them for so long. Not in 20 years.

I’m not sure why they’ve stopped and my doctor says not to question it. But there are a few reasons I can think of, or perhaps just one reason.

Diet.

I have been changing the way I eat since the start of the year. Not only do I eat less, I’ve drastically cut down on a number of foods, any of which could have been the migraine trigger. The main ones I can identify now are:

1. Starch. I have cut down my intake of pasta, rice and potatoes to almost zero. I’ll eat very small quantities of them occasionally, mostly when I eat out, but I do not prepare any of it at home. I do eat bread (just rye and wholemeal), daily.

2. Cheese. Although I still eat some Dutch cheese, I have cut all other cheese from my diet. I used to eat all kinds of French / Italian / etc cheeses, especially on the weekend, but I stopped doing that since I’m on a mission to shed 25 kilos (I’m halfway there).

Other than that it’s just less of everything, including alcohol. My alcohol intake has never been that high anyway, except for a brief while when I was in college.

Who knows, it might be coincidence. Perhaps I’ve just grown out of them – my dad’s migraines stopped when he was in his 50’s.

I think what the doctor said was good advice, I will not question it. When I have reached my weightloss goal, I will continue to eat as I do now, just slightly more. I don’t intend to increase the starch intake, but I would like to enjoy a bit of lovely cheese now and then. We’ll see if that will have any influence and whether the migraines will reoccur.

I can’t express how wonderful it is to only have ‘normal’ headaches. Ones that don’t need special medication (I’m weaning myself of the daily Sandomigran, and the Maxalts are sitting in my cupboard, unused) and are solved with a simple paracetamol.

If you suffer from migraines, I would suggest looking into food and allergies – who knows, you might find relief as well!