Sufferers often find adhering to a special diet can really help reduce symptoms.
One of the most popular is the “MAV diet” aka the 6C’s diet.
What is the “6C’s” restriction diet? Generally it’s avoiding:
- Cheese (& dairy)
- Chianti (& other alcohol)
- Caffeine
- Chinese food (and other processed foods containing a lot of MSG)
- Citrus fruits & their juices
- Chocolate
Caffeine Restriction
Many sufferers find this a significant help. Try to reduce caffeine significantly or eliminate it from your diet and be aware just how much caffeine there is in what you are eating or drinking, even in tea!:
| Beverage |
Caffeine Per 8 oz Cup |
| Green Tea |
35-70 mg |
| Oolong Tea |
50-75 mg |
| Black Tea |
60-90 mg |
| Redbush Tea |
0 mg |
| Coffee |
150-200 mg |
| Decaf Coffee |
5 mg |
Sufferers sometimes find other dietary triggers and often explore the diet promoted to ‘regular’ migraine sufferers.
We have a few 
Migraine Diet Books listed here on the Member Recommended Products page. Please feel free to recommend more!
Also consider visiting our friend, the https://thedizzycook.com/ for some free migraine-safe recipes!
I found this app very useful to capture consumption, activity, environment and symptoms and expose their relationship. What you may find is that it’s very, very hard to find correlation:
There is more discussion of diet in this Category
Take me back to the Welcome Page
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Here are some articles I have collected related to migraine elimination diets.
Comprehensive Migraine Diet
migraine_elimination_diet_comprehensive.pdf (114.5 KB)
Dr. Surenthiran’s 6 C’s handout
DrSurenthiran.pdf (23.6 KB)
Headache Elimination Diet
handout_ha_elim_diet_patient.pdf (276.6 KB)
Hidden Sources of MSG
Hidden Sources of MSG.pdf (87.4 KB)
Johns Hopkins Headache Center diet handout
carey_hopkins-Migraine-Diet.pdf (1004.3 KB)
Lost and Found: What to Eat
Vertigo Tales and Tastes Lost and Found - WHAT TO EAT (USA).pdf (1.1 MB)
Magnesium
Magnesium_October_2013.pdf (190.5 KB)
Migraine Trigger Foods: The “No” List
Migraine-Free Foods: The “Yes” List
Tyramine-safe food list
Tyraminelistpdf0916.pdf (269.0 KB)
Vestibular Migraine Diet
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I think it might be worth noting in the original post that the diet doesn’t necessarily mean everyone with migraine will benefit from it. It helps some and not others. New visitors to the site who are newly diagnosed might feel that it’s a treatment they need to do but it’s not just a textbook treatment. This applies to all treatments and also triggers so is it worth just adding a few sentences to each topic to explain that to people?
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Yeah, that’s why I used less definitive language, like “often find”.
I would actually argue not enough attention is paid to diet.
I feel I may have been in denial about the potential extent to which chocolate and caffeine might have contributed to the onset of my condition. It’s notoriously hard to pin down a link though.
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I agree with James, that diet is another possible trigger just like weather, environment, physical activity, etc. while something you eat may be a trigger for you, it might not trigger me.
I was originally staying away from caffeine and chocolate, two of my faves, because I was told it would cause a migraine. As I experimented with other things to find my triggers, I finally got to food, and when I added caffeine back in, there was no reaction, other than my BP & heart rate went up a little. I took the caffeine back out and a week later added chocolate (Special Dark) and there was no change to anything I could measure or observe.
I don’t consume very much caffeine because my cardiologist has instructed me to cut back. But chocolate is too much to ask, I think that falls under cruel and unusual punishment.
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