FOOD TRIGGERS

     I feel this post may be one of the most important posts I write.  Usually I write mostly for myself  without hoping too much that someone will read it but even if I could help one or two people that just happened upon this post I would be very happy.  It has been seven years since I last posted and much of that time has been discovering food triggers for my migraines.
     I would like to start by saying I was one of those people who kind of poo pooed the thought of food triggers.  I go to a headache center and I was told my doctor's philosophy was that food triggers are too difficult to narrow down so he didn't even try to get patients to find them.  I think my attitude is important because it has made it more difficult to find them because there is whole thought process involved.  It had started with a lot of denial and doubting and has ended with knowing for sure that certain foods trigger migraines for me.  This journey has been long and I would say arduous, with a lot of emotional ups and downs.  You may wonder how it could be emotional.  It is emotional because I find it sad and somewhat depressing to know that I cannot eat certain foods that I love for the rest of my life without risking a migraine.  People who know me will try to be comforting and tell me that at least I know about them and can be happy that if I don't eat them I will get less migraines.  Yes, I am happy about that but that doesn't make it easier to give them up.  It wouldn't be so bad if it was only a couple of things but it is many things and each new food that I discover brings with it the denial, sadness and then begrudging acceptance.
     I suppose the journey began even earlier when I figured out that chocolate was giving me diarrhea.  This discovery was even before I began to have increased migraines.  My sister in law had given me the biggest bag of M&Ms I have ever seen.  It was mostly for my three kids but that summer I probably had a small handful of them every day.  I am not one to binge on any one food item so there wasn't an immediate thought that it was causing me a problem.  I just knew that summer I had a lot of diarrhea.  Haha.  At the end of the summer I had finally had the thought that there might be a connection but only after the diarrhea had miraculously subsided.  So I started to experiment and figured it out.  Again, this had nothing to do with migraines since I was still only getting one a year or maybe every two years.  I did figure out that I couldn't necessarily eat things without consequence.
          Over these years of having an increased frequency of migraines I can have entire years that are bad and entire years that are good.  Bad for me is up to four migraines a month and good is going months without a migraine.  I think the most I went was five months.  I would like to point out, as a reminder, that I am on Dostinex (Lamictal) as well as butterburr extract every day to prevent them.  I have tried unsuccessfully three times to wean myself off the Dostinex by lowering my dose.  I did have one particularly bad year and my doctor added Topamax in addition to the Dostinex.  It worked wonders and completely eradicated the migraines but it is nicknamed "Dopamax" for a reason.  I am slow to figure things out so I was on it for a year and was napping every afternoon before figuring out the connection.  I suffered from other side effects that didn't subside with time so I successfully weaned myself off.  Even though I now get some migraines I will not go back to Topamax unless things get really bad.  I mention the medicine because I am about to write that I have had extreme success from avoiding food triggers but it has not allowed me to go off my medication but it still has helped a lot.
     I first began to realize I had food triggers in a very slow way since I had that level of denial that they could exist.  First I began to have this generalized feeling that certain foods were best to be avoided.  Swedish Fish was among them.  Again, I seem to eat more candy in the summer and had been having a few of them most days when I realized that summer I had more migraines.  This was only one food so I figured it wouldn't hurt to stop eating them without doing a lot of research.  I thought a bit about how red dyes are a supposed trigger for people.  Then one evening I was super thirsty and right before going to bed I had a huge glass of Hawaiian Punch.  I woke up at 2:00 am with a raging migraine and the next day thought "Aha!"  I began avoiding all red dye which was kind of depressing because apparently I love brightly colored candy!  At this point I was only avoiding things that were red and not reading labels so it still wasn't too bad.
     A weird thing had started to happen to me that I have never heard from anyone else and have never read anywhere.  I started to get an unstoppable heartburn when there was a looming migraine.  It was not something that I wondered about, it is a definite connection.  It did make me realize that certain foods must be a trigger.
     Subsequently I have learned that most dyes cause me a problem.  Other foods I avoid are certain spices, soda, tea and still chocolate.  I use the word avoid because some things I am not 100% sure about and somethings I can get away with occasionally.  Currently I am in the process of accepting the fact that beer and probably alcohol in general is a trigger.
     I learned about tea because occasionally I would drink that huge ole cup of McDonald's sweet tea and eventually I realized and accepted that it could cause me a migraine.  I looked up the ingredients since sometimes things have dyes that you wouldn't expect.  Tea and sugar were the only ingredients.  I was 100% sure it was giving me migraines so I resorted to googling "why does McDonald's sweet tea give me migraines."  That is when I found out that the tannin found in teas can trigger migraines in some people.  Since then I have learned a lot about tannin and which foods have the most but that would be a separate post for a later time.
     For now I want to end with the thought that even people like me can find and accept that we have food triggers.  If you have a suspicion but don't want to accept it, I would encourage you to consider and investigate because it can indeed help you to lower your migraine frequency.