Diet and headaches/dizziness

I have a question about diet. I recently read the book “heal your headache” and am trying to follow the diet as listed in his book as well as a low tyramine diet. Milk, certain cheeses, and eggs are all listed as okay to eat. So basically every day I have cereal with milk. I am wondering why there are sooo many dietary modifications you can make, but a lot of the info is contradictory. Just when I seem to get things “straight” I read about another trigger that I have actually been enjoying! Also, is my goal of eliminating dietary triggers going to help with the dizziness/overstimulation part of this, the headache or both? And while I am here, how does someone gauge how a medication is doing? Reducing migraine headaches or the sypmoms of MAV or both?

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Per Dr. Hain (MAV guru) migraine and MAV are both the same mechanism, showing up in different symptoms for different people. You should get to feeling better in all the ways…
Personally the food thing didn’t work for me, and some doctors say it isn’t that important unless there are some really BIG triggers…but I can’t find my triggers other than stress/sleep and red wine. Even having those all under
control, I still resorted to medication…which has me at a good 90% percentile 90% of the time. Which is great.
Good luck on your trigger journey…try to keep a journal…it may help!
Kelley

Thanks Kelley!
I have never been able to identify triggers, but then again I never really knew how many possible triggers there were! (dietary) I can definitely say that flashing lights and glare from sun can be a trigger, but anything else is up inthe air. As far as this MAV thing…who knows. i havent had a “migraine” per se, since this all started in April, but I could go months in the past without getting one. So needless to say I am unsure if the medicine is actually helping or not. I do see a big improvement in symptoms overall, but am still finding it diffcult to drive (staying focused) and still haven’t returned to work. The only thing I have noticed is I seem to be getting more nagging headaches almost daily… I am hoping that the medication will straighten me out in time, and that I see an improvement with dietary mods. (Although I am missing my normal foods, and sooooooo want a beer/drink!)

According my neurologist, and I suppose this only applies to people who have a history of migraine headaches, you only need to eliminate the triggers that caused your headaches in the past. There is nothing special to this diet and stopping dizziness. He is not a fan of major elimination diets for MAV unless you have a known trigger to your past migraines.

Good luck to you!

Jenh21 - have you tried eliminating the cereal and milk?? I couldn’t tell from your post. Milk and some grain products make me dizzy and/or give me headaches. And, I’ve experimented with all the categories of the foods listed in Buchholz’s book and most of the classic migraine books and ended up identifying all sorts of odd triggers along with the help of my allergist. It might not necessarily be a category of food but a preservative, food additive, spice, etc. or even vitamins and supplements that will set a person off. I’m finding great variation even between brands and manufacturers of food. It’s rather complicated for me, I’m afraid. Hang in there.
Gail