Please Help Me With Food

21

Yes, I’m reading that book “Heal Your Headache” and he talks about trigger overload. He says triggers can have sort of an additive effect, where if you have a few minor triggers (such as chocolate, wine, and cheese), you might be OK if you just have a little bit of chocolate one day but if you have a bunch of chocolate plus a bunch of wine plus a bunch of cheese, the sum of them all might be enough to set off an attack.

The WORST place to try to eat is in airports. Everything seems to be full of salt. And many times the choices are very limited.

I found a website that has a lot of low-sodium info and recipes: http://www.megaheart.com/index.html. They even have sources for things like low-sodium baking soda and baking powder. I’ve never tried to limit my intake that much.

I’m waiting with baited breath on this one. Can’t wait to hear what changed your mind.

22

Or on planes!!! Some of the worst tinnitus I"ve had in the last year was after a long haul flight. I drank LOADS of water but still had scary amounts of tinnitus by the time we’d landed.

23

still finalising my research, will report back soon :slight_smile:

24

back to the original question - what can one eat?

anything that is not packaged and has not got any of the 6Cs.

some migraine drs (eg Buckholz) suggest avoiding nuts, tomatoes, avocado, and a bunch of other stuff too. i am sticking to the stricter diet because it’s an easy thing to do and if it works, it has zero side effects. i’m also off gluten and dairy - but for other reasons - i had a bad gut infection that kicked this whole thing off for me.

basically stock up on things that are good and easy, so you always have something to hand. rice, porridge, granola bars (check ingredients) fresh fruit, fresh veg, meat, fish, soya milk, etc. honey, blueberries and granola. apple juice. it’s easy to eat well. BUT it’s hard when you are out and about and want to grab a snack, so take stuff with you whenever possible, and plan what you can buy to eat.

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Here is Dr. Hain’s migraine diet: http://dizziness-and-balance.com/disorders/central/migraine/treatments/migraine%20and%20food.htm

The below is quoted from his site. He says to avoid the following:

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Well last night I broke every rule in the book (I drank fine red wine, a cocktail, ate a salty meal with goodness knows what was in the sauce) and and the outcome was predictable but could have been worse. Balance survived (so far and relatively speaking) with no vertigo but my ear pressure and tinnitus went crazy! The ear seemed to ‘bubble’ so maybe that was releasing pressure and perhaps saved me from a full on vertigo attack. No way am I letting myself relax again like that. Man this condition is soooo annoying! Absolutely no way is the root cause of this problem in the brain, its definitely the ear!

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no controversy here - definitely causes me issues every time I indulge in a source of dense chocolate in too great a volume. I never get a full on migraine these days, but I get the uncomfortable ‘brain rumbles’.

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Why do you say definitely the ear? The wine is a migraine trigger and the salt is an ear trigger.

29

Because of the tinnitus. The reissner membrane is known to be extremely compliant. Once you start to fill the blood plasma with a rush of nutrients and chemicals from what you consume you set off increased osmotic activity in the ear which may already be hydropic. This can temporarily worsen the hydrops and this results in increased tinnitus. Also it’s pretty obviously the ear if tinnitus is unilateral.

Sure there is neurological impact as the hydrops in the ear changes its sensory profile. The brain gets upset. But it’s not the root cause imho. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of migraines are due to peripheral instability. But sure. Some chemicals may render the brain more susceptible to migraine so there may be that element playing a part too. But if the senses were 100% healthy I doubt you’d experience a migraine.

30

This is the tricky piece. Migraines are known to cause Aura (Eyes affected). The aura IMHO does not mean the eyes are malfunctioning but brain visual processing center is messed up. Migraines are know to cause tingling all over (skin affected by neuropathy). Migraines are know to cause nausea as well. I wonder extrapolating this can migraines cause dizziness as well ? I would say why not when all other sensory processing centers can be affected why not the center for balance. But the tricky piece is chronic dizziness cannot be migraines as one cannot have migraines for a year continuously so there is something definitely wrong with the ear.

Also Reissner membrane being compliant i wonder how the Reissner membrane is the one to budge or break in Meniere’s(primary or secondary hydrops). If the windows(oval or round) are as delicate as we deem them to be, should they not be the first thing to give away and open up. So everyone with Meniere’s should have a fistula which is not the case. The more i think on this i land up with more questions :slight_smile:

31

Or can a migraine last that long? There are other headache varieties that can last for a year, such as hemicrania continua.

32

Hi Manatee,

I have never felt 100% normal ever since my relapse. I have days where i feel close to 95% but they are rare and few. I agree with James that we cannot write off everything under the migraine diagnosis.

The meds have helped me manage migraine to a large extent so they help with symptom management while we are all wishing the underlying condition fixes itself :slight_smile:

33

Yes, the “vestibular migraine” diagnosis still seems like a catch-all phrase that is used when they can’t figure out what else is wrong.

Twenty-two years ago I was told that I had “vestibular neuronitis,” which seemed like a catch-all phrase because they couldn’t find anything else obvious. Then a year ago I was told no, it’s “vestibular migraine” and not “vestibular neuronitis” but the reason I wasn’t told that 22 years ago was because vestibular migraine hadn’t been discovered yet.

AL

34

16 months ago I was told I have vestibular neuritis and recommended to do VRT. I lived in hope that VRT will fix me and moaned in despair when there was no progress. So I don’t think things have changed for 22 years. :slight_smile:

I was told I have b12 deficiency by the first neurologist and wasted 3 months there only to finally be told I have VM by another neuro otologist.

I have read your posts but I forget what daily meds are you on ?

35

No daily meds for VM.

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Any new found hearing loss ever since the violent attacks ?

37

flavour of the decade.

First they blame it on a virus, then on a migraine. Both wishy washy hand waving rubbish. Unprovable.

Sudden onset migraine condition has to have a very definite reason, and its this they need to settle upon. You don’t walk around without migraine for 20 years plus of your life (in my case > 45) and then start to get a very disturbing and severe 24/7 migraine problem for nothing!!! To get the same feeling of scepticism I had, simply ask a neurologist why you didn’t have migraine for x decades and now apparently you do? You will get either an honest ‘we don’t know’ or some very fanciful answer like ‘a DNA mutation’ which I received. Yes a DNA mutation that only affected one ear, didn’t affect the rest of my body and ignored my obvious ear trauma from 5 months previously. OMG PLEASE DO NOT BELIEVE THIS BS! (it was very hard for me to take this doctor seriously after this statement)

I think I’m pretty convinced its imbalance of fluids in the ear, most likely due to loss of perilymph pressure, either acutely from a big injury, or chronically from a small one that lead to a slow leak or due to a congenital issue. The inner ear’s main weakness is the exposure of the very thin window membranes to the middle ear. This fully explains the risk to me. The nasty part about this hypothesis is that the injury and full onset of symptoms could be separated by months or years. In my case I got ‘MAV’ after ear trauma I had 5 months previously. This can be a subtle imbalance and not affect hearing, just cause vestibular problems. In more difficult cases it can effect hearing too.

We basically need a very accurate clinical test for Hydrops in the ear and then we can put this whole thing to bed.

It speaks volumes that nearly nobody seems to get a diagnosis of Secondary Hydrops (SEH) these days (judging by the health forums), and nearly everyone with chronic dizziness (and without low frequency hearing loss) get’s ‘MAV’. It also speaks volumes that the symptoms and treatment of these two conditions are identical. Then comes the interesting evidence that conservative treatment for perilymph fistula (known to cause SEH) is identical to MAV treatment. It’s also worth noting that MAV is so so so similar to Menieres yet one is about migraines and the other is about Endolymphatic Hydrops - what?! We are asked to believe that the brain migraines are ‘simulating’ all of the ear symptoms that you get in Meniere’s. Just RUBBISH! Ear pressure = migraine? Tinnitus = migraine? Vertigo = migraine? Wake up people, this is totally ridiculous!! The ear pressure is, guess what - EAR PRESSURE. The tinnitus is guess what - inner ear disturbance! And the vertigo is a probably a leak of perilymph, due to … guess what … EAR PRESSURE … and this is probably evolved behaviour because the inner ear windows are clearly very thin to allow breaches when pressure gets too high, probably to limit damage and disturbance to the ear! And don’t get me started on how migraines cause hearing loss! :smiley:

MAV, Menieres, PLF, BPPV and SEH are NOT disconnected and separable into categories of ear/brain, they are ALL connected sharing very similar symptoms and due to issues with the very same mechanisms that governs the functioning of the inner ear. Sure the brain gets involved on top, and has to deal with the mess of signals from the ear that no longer matches learned behaviour nor that of the healthy ear - result? MIGRAINE.

It all adds up that MAV = SEH, but somehow an entire influential section of the medical fraternity managed to drown out the rest.

Learn your anatomy and be your own advocate!

/gets down from soap box.

38

No, my hearing is excellent for my age (56).

39

Meant to ask if you had an hearing exam lately. Hearing test is the only quantifiable way to know if anything funky going on in the ear. What you describe sounds like a drop attack and hence asking.

40

I had all of the tests a year ago (the more-violent attacks have been going on longer than that; that’s why I went to the specialist in 2016).

Audiological Analysis - excellent hearing
OAE (Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions) - normal
BAER (Brainstem Auditory Evoked Response) - normal
ECoG (Electrocochleography) - right SP/AP ratio 38%, left SP/AP ratio 64%
CDP (Computerized Dynamic Posturography) - normal
VEMP (Vestibular-Evoked Myogenic Potentials) - normal
V/ENG (Video/Electronystagmography) - normal
MRI of the brain, with and without contrast - normal