Migraine & Headaches

The excruciating, throbbing pain of this condition which, at its worse, can land a sufferer in bed for a day or incapacitate them for several days. These debilitating headaches are often accompanied by vision sensitivities (even temporary blindness), nausea, shaking, vomiting, fatigue, depression, skin problems, and irritable bowel, all symptoms that compound the suffering. Statistically, headaches cripple more people than motorcycle accidents, car collisions, and industrial accidents combined. Many get chronic, recurring headaches, and that number increases every year. 70 percent of all migraine sufferers are women.

These chronic, recurring headaches are severe enough to cause those in pain to seek medical attention and, in some cases, prevent them from maintaining full-time employment. In the United Kingdom, migraine sufferers comprise the largest group attending neurological clinics up to one-third of all patients in some centres. Some estimates have placed the incidence of migraine in the population as high as 30 percent. More working days are lost due to headache than through any other single category of complaint. When migraineurs try to work with a headache, they are less efficient and many feel they cannot plan their work and social lives for fear of being devastated by a headache.

Of the several types of headaches, most fall into one of three basic categories: tension-type headaches that bring an ache in the area where the muscles of the head and neck meet; vascular headaches, which include migraines, toxic, and cluster headaches.

Many popular treatments are available - including prescription and over-the-counter medications - yet the excruciating head pain still continues for millions. Often sufferers search their whole lives for help, willing to try anything that even remotely claims to be a cure. Many choose to suffer the dangerous side effects of drugs, including constricted blood vessels around the heart as well as in the brain, rather than endure a migraine's wrath.

Some sufferers, however, have found the solution - treatment for food intolerance. Thousands of patients and dozens of research studies show that identifying and eliminating their intolerant foods is a viable solution for many. How removing food (and chemical) intolerance's works to alleviate migraines is not clear. Up to now, the cause of headaches has been attributed to hormonal imbalance, genetic predisposition, chronic tension, and emotional issues, with some foods cited as the triggers. However, doctors who recognize food intolerance as a cause of headaches agree that medical professionals who ignore food allergy cannot get the whole picture. As Dr. Richard Bahr, an environmental medicine specialist in Cincinnati, puts it:

"We know that migraines are a food problem until you can prove otherwise. They are not all food-related, but the greater percent are. A large portion of head pain, including even the worst forms of migraine, are simply due to allergic reactions," writes Dr. Theron Randolph in An Alternative Approach to Allergies.

It's common to hear that certain foods trigger migraines - for example, aged cheese, chocolate, and red wine are often implicated. But you'll never hear popular medical focus on lamb, milk, or wheat. Yet those are the foods that caused people to suffer from excruciating headaches and migraines, no matter which of the commonly accepted headache - trigger foods they eliminated from their diets. Dr. Anthony Ferro in Palm Beach, who has successfully treated many patients with migraine, noted:

"I have one patient, Tom, who gets a migraine whenever he eats wheat."

Dr. Solomon has conducted research on the ALCAT Test to determine its effectiveness as a guide and barometer in the therapy of environmental and food sensitivities. Her study not only confirmed that the ALCAT Test is a valuable guide in quickly identifying a person's food, mould, and chemical allergies, but it also showed that several conditions, including migraines, can be improved by addressing food intolerance.

"The traditional medical community says that classic migraine is not food allergy, but in my experience it is," says Dr. Solomon.

Her study included 71 patients with headaches. Of the nine patients with classic migraine (which includes visual disturbances such as flashing lights and split vision), 82 percent showed improvement after eliminating the foods to which they tested reactive. Of the 39 patients with common migraine (which includes no visual disturbances), 62 percent showed improvement. And of the 23 patients with sinus headaches, 58 percent showed improvement.

"My study showed that eliminating food intolerance's is effective in clearing a person's migraine 82 percent of the time, and 82 percent is pretty good."

In two studies they conducted on migraines and food intolerance using the ALCAT Test, Drs. Fell and Brostoff found excellent results for headache and migraine sufferers. In the first study, conducted in 1988, 80 patients with a variety of conditions including migraine were observed. Drs. Fell and Brostoff showed that this simple blood test, as opposed to guesswork, enabled them to identify patients' food intolerance, and the patients who stopped eating the sensitive foods showed clear-cut improvement of migraines, while the patients who continued to eat their allergic foods showed "disastrous results."

In a second study conducted in 1990, 14 of 18 patients with migraines got better. During the 12 month study, these patients' improvement was measured by scoring all four target symptoms - aura, headache, nausea and vomiting. All maintained their success.

"Interestingly, several of the patients said that although an aura developed, there was a failure of the full-blown syndrome to develop with headache, nausea, and vomiting," explains Professor Brostoff.

A study on the relationship of food intolerance to weight loss, body composition, and self-reported disease symptoms was conducted in 1995 at the Columbia/HCA Medical Center's Sports Medicine and Performance Center in Houston and Baylor Medical College Sports Medicine and Performance Institute. Lead investigator Gilbert Kaats, Ph.D., director of the Health and Medical Research Foundation, an independent research organization in San Antonio, found that people on an ALCAT diet who reported suffering from migraines improved by 50 percent within four weeks. Migraine sufferers who followed diets of their own choosing said that their head pain had only improved by about 25 percent at the end of the four-week study.

The idea that allergenic foods can cause headaches is not new. Many researchers have discovered a relationship between allergy and migraines. As far back as 1905, the Australian medical pioneer Dr. Francis Hare reported that head pain could be the result of eating incompatible foods. In 1927, two prominent American allergists, Drs. Albert G. Rowe and Warren T. Vaughan, both published articles implicating specific foods as the cause of allergic headaches.

In a study in 1930, Dr. Rowe again found migraines to be related to food allergy. In 1934, Dr. A. Andresen reported that migraine was an allergic phenomenon. In 1979, Dr. C. G. Grant reported that diet led to freedom from migraine attacks in 51 of 60 patients, while the other nine patients experienced a reduction in headache frequency. In 1985, Dr. Lyndon Mansfield, president of the American In Vitro Allergy and Immunology Society and an allergy specialist in private practice in El Paso, Texas, published a study on food allergy and the adult migraine that showed a clear relationship between migraines and allergic disease. With guesswork alone to identify causative foods, Dr. Mansfield observed that 6 out of 43 patients became headache-free, and 13 subjects experienced 66 percent or greater reduction in headache frequency.

In 1935, Dr. Theron Randolph wrote a medical paper entitled "Allergy in Migraine-like Headaches," based on his work while at the University of Michigan Medical School. In this paper, he observed that two-thirds of the migraine patients at the University Hospital in Ann Arbor obtained relief from headaches by eliminating various foods from their diets. In 1989, he wrote, "These results are certainly better than those achieved by conventional medicine. There is no need for a person to suffer for years on end with persistent headaches when the cause of these disorders can often be identified and relieved by eliminating certain common substances from the environment. Today, however, even better results can be achieved through the diagnosis of chemical susceptibility and of some common food allergies, which had not then been identified."

He notes that there is no mass-applicable shortcut to finding intolerant foods and controlling headaches. What affects one patient does not trouble the next.

Pain, Pain, Go Away: Children and Migraines
Adults are not the only ones to suffer from headaches and migraines; children do as well. Headaches in children are thought to be genetically inherited from parents who have migraines. Studies show that 70-80 percent of migraines have a hereditary influence. If both parents have them, children have a 75 percent chance of having migraines as well. When one parent suffers from migraines, the child will have a 50 percent chance of being afflicted. Dr. Joseph Egger, who works at the Childrens' Hospital in Munich, Germany, posed the question 'Is Migraine Food Allergy?' in a study of children's headaches published in a 1983 issue of The Lancet. He found that when 78 of 88 children who experienced headaches at least once a week eliminated certain foods from their diets, they completely recovered from the migraines, as well as associated symptoms like abdominal pain, behavior disorders, asthma, and eczema.

This study also resulted in some interesting conclusions:

Many parents have been greatly relieved to find a simple, non-invasive, non-medicating solution to their children's debilitating headaches.

The Anatomy of a Migraine
The physical process and cause of headaches and migraines are not yet clearly understood. Current thinking suggests that the aura, or warning associated with migraine (such as vision problems), is due to a narrowing or constriction of the blood vessels supplying the brain and its surrounding tissues, thereby reducing the blood flow to the areas. Following the constriction phase, the blood vessels are then believed to dilate more than normal. The typical pounding headache and migraine is associated with the swelling of the blood vessels surrounding the brain.

Another part of this stage is inflammation caused by the clumping of certain blood cells, the platelets, during an attack. These platelets are tiny cell-type structures in the blood whose main function is to help the blood clot around a wound. During clotting the platelets clump together and release the natural brain neurotransmitter serotonin, which makes the blood vessels constrict to help reduce blood loss. During a migraine attack, the platelets clump together and release large amounts of serotonin when it is not needed. The serotonin makes the blood vessels constrict and so reduces the blood flow to the brain.

The body has control mechanisms that counteract the effect of the serotonin, but these may cause a violent swing in the opposite direction when they come into play. Interestingly, the eicosanoids PGE-2 and PG1-1 are both potent vasodilators. PGE-2 is found in areas of inflammation and is synthesized by platelets, while PG1-1 is synthesised by the blood vessel lining or endothelium and is an antagonist of platelet clumping. The increased production of these eicosanoids in response to the inflammation and platelet clumping associated with a food sensitivity reaction may partially explain many migraine headache reactions. The blood vessels in the brain open up too much, which brings on the throbbing pain that is a feature of the second phase of the attack. At this point increased pressure on certain parts of the brain might produce feelings of nausea.

The ALCAT Test measures the change in the size and number of white blood cells and also identifies when foods or chemicals cause platelet clumping. (This serotonin-induced constriction of the vasculature may explain how fenfluramine [of "phen-fen" fame] and its related compound, dexfenfluramine [trade name Redux] lead to an increased risk for primary pulmonary hypertension [PPH] and associated heart valve damage.)

Two popular theories regarding how severe headaches and migraines come about relate to specific food "triggers" and hormonal changes. Yet eliminating foods such as chocolate, aged cheese, and red wine and taking hormone-managing drugs such as non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory agents have helped few sufferers. The "amines" in certain foods are thought to affect the diameter of the blood vessels, and thereby produce headaches. (Amines are byproducts of chemical reactions involving amino acids in the body, but also exist naturally in certain foods. The most common reference is to foods high in tyramine. (Tyramine is neutralized in the bodies of most people by monamine oxidase.)

But research has shown that "there must be other factors that can make the platelets clump together, because it is only a minority of patients whose migraines are triggered by these foods," says Dr. Brostoff. He continues by describing the process:

The foods identified by an elimination diet seem to be acting in a different way from the accepted food "triggers." When these foods are eliminated from the diet, the migraines usually clear up completely, whereas excluding trigger foods only makes the migraines less frequent. Following an elimination diet, and the avoidance of culprit foods, patients often find that they can once more tolerate their triggers-both food and nonfood. It looks as if the milk, wheat, or whatever was creating some serious underlying problem that made the body vulnerable to any external change.

Thus bright lights, stress, the flickering of a television screen, or the pharmacologically active substances in chocolate could upset the delicate balance and tip the whole system into a migraine attack. Once the underlying food intolerance has been sorted out, the system is far more stable and can better cope with external circumstances.

One of the main preventive measures is to minimize the load by excluding the worst offenders or minimizing the lesser offenders. There is a threshold beyond which a migraine attack is triggered; to lower the load so that the threshold is never reached enables the individual to maintain health rather than to have to treat an illness.

Eliminating our system's reactive foods is the fastest most effective way to reduce the "load" on our system.

Hormonal changes have also been implicated as a cause of migraines due to the fact that migraines affect women more than men, and they often begin occurring at the onset of menstruation. However, if female endocrine changes are to blame, the current treatment of choice-drugs-is a poor solution for most people. According to an article in the January/February 1996 issue of Health magazine, written by Dr. Fred Sheftell, director and co-founder of the New England Center for Headache, the migraine pharmaceuticals don't work for everyone, and can have dangerous side effects. Interestingly, the drugs mimic the neurotransmitter serotonin by constricting blood vessels. However, the drugs show no discretion in which blood vessels they constrict; along with brain blood vessels, they constrict blood vessels leading to the heart, legs, and arms-which can lead to potentially severe health problems.

"If you're born with this disorder, it's like having a stick of dynamite with a fuse in your head, and certain activators-stress, foods, hormonal fluctuations-light it," Dr. Sheftell says. The article further reported that migraine sufferers are waiting for the "breakthrough drug" or the "perfect fix" that will block migraines by reducing the inflammation in their head without affecting arteries or veins in other parts of the body. They just don't know yet that thousands of migraine sufferers have already discovered the perfect fix-eliminating intolerant foods. What could be safer or more natural than that?

Further, patients are rarely aware of the environmental source of their illness. You may see no relation between eating and your headaches, since the effects can be delayed (from one hour to seven days). Or you may know that your headache is somehow related to food intake, but that intake is so complex and varied that uncovering the actual source may seem impossible. Or you may know that a particular food relieves your headache pain, not realizing that the "relief" meal is nothing but your maintenance dose.

Serotonin is a chemical substance produced by platelets. This neurotransmitter, which is also naturally produced in the brain, has the job of sending messages between nerve cells, thereby controlling how we feel. Serotonin may have different effects when it is produced in the brain to serve as a neurotransmitter as opposed to being released into the bloodstream as a result of an inflammatory reaction and platelet clumping. Vasodilatation may be viewed as the body's tendency to return to normal following the vasoconstriction associated with a food reaction and platelet clumping.

As Dr. Solomon puts it: "With any condition, unless you remove all the foods that trigger a person's migraines, you're not going to get to the problem."