Migraines and Salad

One of the interesting things which happened since I started my diet is that my migraines have all but disappeared.

Since I was in my mid-teens I have suffered from ocular migraines. For me, the ocular part--called a scotoma--always starts with a spot in the center of my vision where I cannot read or focus any more. That spot would expand, become sparkly, turn into a large crescent, and continue to grow until the crescent exited my vision.

Early on, when the crescent left my visual field, I would get slammed with an excruciatingly painful headache, nausea, and a diminished ability to function for the remainder of the day. After a few years, the excruciating headache and nausea stopped occurring, but I would still be impaired for the remainder of the day. My diminished function usually meant that I would have trouble finding nouns, would have a regular-intensity headache, and would be extra negatively emotionally sensitive (e.g. snippy).

My parents and each of my siblings suffer from migraines as well, so as a family we just figured its something we have to deal with, and we would structure our lives around the migraines as needed. We each have Excedrin Migraine in our medicine cabinets, and are used to also having much more powerful medicines available.

In my early twenties my migraines were a daily experience which often happened at the end of the day. I ended up getting eye glasses so that my eyes didn't need to work as hard to focus on text and computer screens. Then the migraines became a weekly or monthly occurrence.

But over time those migraines started to become more frequent, to the point that they would happen a few times a week. Adjusting my eye prescription wouldn't help enough, so I just tried to keep from getting super stressed so that I could function normally for longer periods of time.

Several months after starting my diet I realized that I hadn't had a migraine at all. At the end of following the diet for a year, I had only experienced two migraines! Another happy co-occurrence from my diet.

It's been many years, now, of following this diet about 95% faithfully and a once every 3-to-6 months cadence for migraines has held pretty well. The only time where I started experiencing daily migraines was when I was under excessive stress at work, and I have since learned to manage that stress better.

I attribute my success to eating salads. Prior to my diet, I consumed a lot of processed foods such as breads, tortillas, and chips. I rarely ate fresh greens. Now, the reverse is true.

What I typically eat is "Spring Mix". I get boxes of it at Costco and Walmart. I will sometimes add some cilantro and/or kale; I either tear up dark green leafy kale or I use the cut up mixed variety from Walmart. I often don't bother with kale, though. I sometimes add sliced radishes or mushrooms. But the basic Spring Mix is often enough. The "Mediterranean Crunch" from Costco is also good (I eat just the salad with none of the toppings). At other times I buy several different heads of lettuce (Green Leaf, Red Leaf, Romaine, and Iceberg), chop them up, and mix up my own salad with cooked grass-fed ground beef and grilled onions. I do not use any packaged salad dressings. Instead, I opt for olive oil, vinegar, and salt. That combination is surprisingly satisfying for me.

When talking about nutrients, most doctors and nutritionists look at the macro nutrients and the various essential vitamins. But what I find is that the variety of foods is more useful and getting nutrients from their original foods rather than supplements is best. Our bodies actually have trouble properly absorbing some vitamins if those vitamins are separated from the whole food (the body needs the other components of that plant to effectively extract and employ its vitamins), so I am not sure if there is a specific nutrient that I might have been missing before my dietary changes.

What I think is more likely is that my body was stressed about getting the nutrients it needed because my diet was lacking a variety of micronutrients. Before my dietary changes, although I consumed plenty of calories, the nutrient density of those foods was low, so my body felt like it was always struggling to get what it needed (i.e. living in a desert). As a result of that struggle, my body would output stress hormones which my mind responded to; constricting blood vessels and triggering migraines. After my dietary changes, I focused on eating nutrient-dense, whole foods, which helped my body feel like it is living in abundance. Consequently, my body no long struggles to get the components it needs, so it doesn't generate stress hormones as much as it used to.