I never would have realized what foods were triggers for me without giving my brain the chance to calm down.
Yogurt, parmesan… nuts?! My jaw practically dropped as I read through the list of foods to avoid on a migraine elimination diet.
At the time, I was newly diagnosed with chronic vestibular migraine, a type of migraine that can come with or without head pain but is mostly characterized by dizziness, vertigo, a false sense of movement, and derealization or depersonalization.
I was on preventive medication, taking all the supplements suggested by my neurologist, and even trying cognitive behavioral therapy, yet I still experienced daily migraine symptoms.
Getting started with a migraine elimination diet
Because I was hoping to start a family soon, which meant I would need to wean off some of my migraine medication, I was looking at every natural treatment possible to try to gain control over my symptoms.
This is when I started researching diet as a factor in migraine treatment. There are a few different diets recommended for migraine, but a migraine elimination diet seemed to be the most popular for discovering personal food triggers.
The migraine dietTrusted Source I was going to try was developed by a doctor affiliated with a prominent academic medical center, so I figured there was some credibility to it, even if the list of foods didn’t make a lot of sense to me at the time.
The principals of a migraine elimination diet are pretty simple. Basically, you cut out foods that are found to be common migraine triggers for a few months until you feel better, or notice a significant reduction in migraine days. Then you begin to slowly add in foods again, one by one, testing for a few days to see if an attack is brought on.
Often this can be aided by using a journal or app to keep track of migraine days and help separate what could have been a trigger that day — weather, food, stress, or a combination of all three.
The challenge of incorporating a migraine elimination diet into everyday life
What I didn’t expect was how difficult it would be to incorporate the diet into my everyday life, especially when I was having daily symptoms.
