If you have migraines, you have probably tried many different options to manage your condition. One area that can trigger migraines is your diet. Our founder suffered for years with a consistent 3 migraines a week. After a long process of dialing in diet and supplementation, he was able to bring his migraine frequency to 3 per month!
Each person is different, and the foods that trigger your migraines will be different than others. For our founder, he found that coconut, processed meat, and alcohol (anything but top shelf) was guaranteed to create a migraine later that day or the next. Below is a list of common foods that people have associated directly with migraines.
Potential Pain Foods
Nuts
Anything with nitrites
Tomatoes
Onions
wheat, including pasta and bread products
Certain citrus
Alcohol (especially red wine)
Dairy Products
Aspartame
MSG and other food additives
Aged Cheese
Processed meats (like salami)
Eggs
Pain Safe Foods
Fresh meat (fish, poultry, and beef)- avoid processed versions
Brown rice
orange, yellow, and green vegetables, such as summer squash, sweet potatoes, spinach, kale and carrots
Elimination and Reintroduction
It is best to start by tracking everything that you eat and drink and track your migraine frequency and severity. Having this can help you and your doctor identify key foods that can be causing issues. Once you have this baseline, you should remove all the potential triggers that you see above and only eat what is considered pain safe foods.
After two weeks, you can slowly introduce each food at a time and track how you feel. By doing this individually, you can quickly determine which of the foods are the culprits. If you add them all back at once, you will know something in the group is causing migraines, but you are not able to pinpoint it. This can also lead you to determine if certain ways of eating are better suited to a healthier life with less migraines. Each person is different so one might find that grains cause a huge issue so something like Paleo or Keto could be the way to go.
Figuring out the foods that cause your migraines is painstaking and can take some time. The effort is well worth the reward as many people have lowered the frequency and severity of their migraines by avoiding certain foods. Pair that with supplements, like TruMigraine, and you are on your way to a life filled with less migraines and less pain.