[burritosnob]

I suffered from migraines for over a decade. They were infrequent at first but, at the peak, I was getting 1-2 a week and felt like I was just "surviving" in life. I saw countless doctors and specialty clinics, none of which offered long term relief other than drugs.

For me, Rizatriptan helped take the edge off pain but I always had more migraines than pills could safely relieve in any given month. In the end, most months I had to choose whether I would get relief in the moment or save the 1-2 remaining pills for the following week(s) before a refill.

I had every blood / allergy test available and none ever showed any issues. I thought there may be a correlation to gluten but there were times where gluten (bread) helped with the nausea side effects.

Ultimately, I gave up gluten, coffee and sugar all at once. Within weeks I felt better and suffered no migraines for over a year until I decided to test the waters with a flour tortilla. Within a few hours I was bed ridden with a migraine for 2-3 days.

I have worked sugar back in to my diet in moderation but gluten and coffee are still out. I have only had that one migraine in 3+ years.

Anyone suffering, the absolute best advice I ever got was to keep a food / pain log. Do it every day no matter what. It may take a week, months or a year but it will uncover something that will help reduce frequency. Also, listen to your body. I had numerous doctors tell me I didn't have any food allergies and to focus on other areas for relief. Every single one was wrong and I could have had a cure years previous.

[jraph]

I've heard coffee can relieve migraines, including from a friend that has migraines and doesn't like coffee, and other people with migraines and these people don't know each others.

I've not read on the topic, at this point I wouldn't rule out the placebo effect, and it seems in your case coffee wasn't helping you, but it would be interesting to know if coffee caused migraines in you without the gluten.

Now, going on without coffee is nice too!

[cfn]

At one point, if I drunk a coffee just before a migraine started it would go away. Nothing scientific here but it happenned too many times (both had the coffee and didn't) to establish the result for me.

[lormayna]

Same for me: I can recognize the migraine coming by some symptoms, then I usually drink coffee and migraine will usually don't show up.

[iJohnDoe]

That’s why Excedrin is made with Tylenol, Aspirin, and Caffeine.

[cfn]

My migraines stopped when I went carnivore which meant no gluten and sugar as well (though I kept the coffee). I'm now in a more keto diet but still no gluten at all and I've only had a couple of light migraines in a year or so (used have them a monthly or more frequently).

It is interesting to know your case as it is a smaller dietary change than mine.

[TN1ck]

Since I dropped caffeine, my migraines also became much less frequent and when I have some caffeine, I am at risk for getting one. It seems closely related to sleep for me and caffeine (even in moderation) just greatly affects my quality of sleep.

[balder1991]

Same for me. As a Brazilian, I’ve always drank coffee without much care, but eventually I started limiting it to mornings.

Then I noticed if I ever forget to drink coffee (or had decaf coffee instead) I’d have a headache in the afternoon.

My solution was to remove caffeine completely, now I only drink decaf coffee and this particular problem disappeared after a few days.

Now about auras, it’s hard to say if there was any effect as they’re more rare for me. This thread is the first time I’ve read people say they drank coffee after the symptoms show up and it can block the headache that comes later on.

[29athrowaway]

Not all flour or sugar are made equal. I wonder what happens if you try flour or sugar from places where some questionable herbicides are banned.

[eastbound]

When I read stories like his, I always wonder what we’re doing with our wheat that so many people become completely wheat-intolerant in just 15 years. It is clearly more than just fashion, clearly people can diagnose it themselves and it happened in the anglo-saxon world first.

[tardy_one]

I'm not really that convinced that it isn't mostly social.. There were more intolerant than diagnosed until the 90s and that has now just flipped with the social overcompensation.

It's really very easy to buy in to the dominant social narrative as an explanation for one of the many undiagnosable health incidents we experience in a lifetime, and the placebo effect confirms whatever is socially helpful.

Most of these social changes now originate or become big from the US first because it dominates international media.

[victorbjorklund]

Or do people in a rich society like ours just have more opportunity to notice problems like this vs if you live in a society where life is more hard? It's like it seems we have more people today identifying as gay vs 100 years ago. Is it really more gay people today or do we just have a more tolerant socity that enables more people to identify as gay?

[tmm84]

I can agree that for me it was cutting my "wheat" (flour, gluten, etc) consumption that helped me have far less migraines over all. I don't really eat much processed sugar (however I used to when I was a kid). I have taken away caffeine and brought it back without much change in frequency. The hardest part for me was a manager one time thinking it was how much I wasn't spending on doctors to poke/prod/image my head to find the cause or take a new medicine that really angered me. Dealing with people who can't understand that I have no control over when they happen and go away is the worst.

[Luker88]

I just started noticing this and I am in the exact same spot, no allergies, lots of migraines.

Thank you for posting this 'cause I though I was making things up by noticing things when all tests were negative.

edit: though it seems to me that coffe(+iburprofen when things are bad) helps.

I started connecting it to food when I noticed I started getting pain on my lower back that slowly creeps up on the course of half a day or so and becomes a migraine. When it starts stopping and I massage my neck down to half my back I get tons of relief when I press on the right nerve/muscle/whatever.

[ddmf]

I tried everything over the years - stopping smoking, removing amalgam fillings etc etc.

Reducing sugar has really helped me, although I take propranolol daily and have rizatriptan to hand if need be.

Used to get chronic paroxysmal hemicrania too - ended up having emergency surgery on an impacted wisdom tooth, ended up in ICU for 4 days but haven't had one of those headaches since.

Definitely always believed I have some trigeminal nerve deformity.