SOT: migraine

What's a "food diary for migraine"?

Ask whoever asked you for one. Why would you need an "app"? What's the matter with pen and paper>

It's a suggestion by the medical profession to keep a 'diary' of what I eat each day to look for 'triggers' for migraine. There was not time to go into detail at my appointment - I think he felt he could leave this to my initiative. To your final question, experience suggests I am more likely to keep a phone app up to date than remember to complete a paper diary at the end of each day. I just wondered if anyone here had experience.

Something like MyFitnessPal is free, and will probably track all you need.

I can't advise on an App because I still use a brick phone.

However, as a Migraine sufferer from an early age, I was left struggling with what was and wasn't a problem, until my sister found a book in the Library called "The Migraine Sufferer's Cookbook". That was 50 years ago so I don't know if it is still available. If it is, then I strongly advise you to read it.

I was in two parts. The first part went into details of how to find out what your triggers are, and the key part of that was analysing the three days before the attack. The diary had to be in detail: EXACTLY what you ate or drank, and when. You are looking for common factors and combinations. Also bear in mind that a migraine can be caused by the lack of something.

On a personal analysis I found that generic terms like "alcohol" are no good. I can drink real ale but not lager or Guinness. I can drink rum or brandy but not gin or whisky. I can drink any red wine, but not any white wine made in Europe, but white wine from Chile or New Zealand seem to be OK. I can drink wine or eat cheese, but both in the same day is a migraine trigger. I have to be very careful about chocolate because milk chocolate has to be eaten within an hour of waking up or I get a migraine the next day, plain chocolate within 2 hours. The biggest trigger for me is dehydration. Insufficient fluids one day means waking with a migraine the next.

The "diary" has to be properly detailed to isolate the triggers, and some of mine are combinations (like the cheese and alcohol one), which might be spread over more than one day hence the 3-day window, and they take a bit of detective work. The good news is that once you have found all your triggers, it is possible to avoid them. I now know them so well that I feel unlucky if I get 2 migraines a year.

The second half of the book is advice on what to substitute. Once you know what to avoid, it advises on alternatives to use in recipes. I wasn't particularly interested in that section, but you might be.

To clarify for non-sufferers, a migraine is not "just a headache". For me it was a crashing pain on just one side of my head, the inability to keep anything in my stomach so the beginning of the migraine empties my stomach completely but anything I swallow afterwards, even plain water, comes straight back up again, and even if I don't swallow anything I still try to vomit now and again. I am also very sensitive to light, so I either have to stay in a darkened room or everything just greys out. That lasts at least 12 hours. I make black tea with no sugar, and take a mouthful every half an hour. If it stays in my stomach for 10 minutes or more, I know my migraine is on the way out. I have no idea why black tea works and plain water doesn't.

So I take Scott's question seriously. Different sufferers are affected in different ways, but the fact that he has been advised to keep a food diary indicates that he hasn't got a mild version. He is right that food types is what he needs to monitor, but my own experience is that it needs to be far more detailed than the assumption he makes in his original post. I wrote my intake history in a day-to-a-page diary. It made it so much easier to be able to look back at possible combinations.

Jim