Posted by Ueli (195.162.167.253) on May 19, 2000 at 11:34:11:
In Reply to: Diet ?? posted by Marc on May 19, 2000 at 08:51:06:
Hi Marc,
The list of migraine triggers are miles long and if if you would avoid everything that some migraineur thought to be a trigger, you would be rid of CH in a few days: Nobody can survive for a long time without drinking and eating anything.
IMHO, these migraine trigger lists are of doubtful value for migrainers and utterly useless for clusterheads.
There have been a few posts in this MB of people who believe that coffee has an adverse effect on their CH, but many, many more, see earlier follow ups, find that it helps to fight against an attack, and many believe that coffee speeds up the absorption of meds.
The migraine triggers are said to have a latency of of up to 24 hours; and again, if applied this to CH, you could not eat or drink anything.
CH triggers are much faster:
Anything you smell (or see or hear) that is followed by an attack within a minute consistently you can consider a trigger.
For almost everybody alcohol triggers within a few minutes.
Other triggers you ingest will trigger an (out of schedule) attack in not much more than 2 hours. If it takes longer to the next attack, the food in question is probably save. It is complete nonsense to blame the regular midnight attack to something you ate for dinner.
One of the most common triggers is MSG (Mono Sodium Glutamat). This nerve poison is liberally used in manufacturing many, many prefabricated food, especially soups, sauces and meet products. (Migraine lists mention 'hot dogs', but it is not the name that triggers but the liberal use of MSG in preparing the sausage). MSG is often disguised as 'taste enhancers', 'artificial seasoning' and other fanciful names. (Luckily, in Europe it has to be declared as E 621).
Natural MSG occurs in cooked tomatoes, so be careful with ketchup.
If you want to read more about this horrible stuff, visit The whole truth about MSG.
Other triggers may be nitrates and nitrides, but food treated with these usually are poisoned with MSG too.
The best way to identify triggers is to keep a diary of your attacks and what you eat. Watch out for unexpected attacks and also note that triggered attacks often differ in intensity and length from the 'regular' ones. In this way you also could identify the rare combination triggers, I've got one of them: Neither alcohol nor cheese (or other dairy products) are a trigger on their own for me, but taking both within an hour trigger an attack which is 3 or 4 times longer than usual.
PFNAD's
Ueli