Can someone tell me what to eat; really… I’ve tried to search online but it seems anything and everything could possibly be a trigger.
Can someone tell me what the elimination-diet is, and what I could actually eat? I don’t mind eating extremely boring stuff, but I can hardly think at the moment so if someone could tell me what I actually can eat that would be much appreciated.
Thanks so much / Mikael.
If you seriously want to try the migraine diet, you have to eliminate all of the foods on the list which leaves you very little to eat. Don’t worry to much, because you only need to stay on the extreme part of the diet for two or three months to let things clear out of you system.
You probably won’t notice much difference while you are eating almost nothing. The purpose of the diet is to clean yourself out so that you can slowly add things back in and find out what are you triggers. I have found two catagories of no-no foods, those that build up in the system and take time to cause problems, such as nuts. The other group will trigger me within 15 minutes. The fifteen minute foods are easy to find once your system is clean because you will definitely feel it soon. The slow ones are hard because you have to eat them in small amounts and if after a few day, to a couple of weeks, you will start to notice things are graudually getting bad.
Things that you can eat while in the intitial elimination process are mostly fresh foods. Fresh meat, not frozen, not canned or prepped in any way; chicken breast is a good meat to get you by for a while. Fresh fruits and veggies (careful with which fruits you pick because some of them are on the migraine diet.) These are just some of the foods you can eat in the elimantion phase.
Once past the elimination stage do things like buy a couple of cans of nuts and eat a few a day for a week or two, if you notice no change then you can put them back on the list of foods you can eat. Try not to add more than one food at a time otherwise it gets next to impossible to find the slow trigger foods.
For me, my fast triggers are things like overly prepared foods, smoked/preserved meats. Preservatives in general. The slow triggers that I have found things like all artificial sweetners, nuts and frequent small quantities of the fast trigger foods.
I hope this helps you some.
thanks a lot brian. Would a diet of “raw” rice (the one where the coating’s still there), organic milk, eggs, raw veggies (which ones to avoid?) as well as fresh meat → chicken be ok as elimination diet?
My plan is to take this for one month then slowly add stuff back in.
Get the book “Heal your Headache” it explains the diet in detail.
Guess I will but I think it would be good to actually have a faq-sheet on the mav-diet here. Kinda silly that I need to buy a book if all I want is a list of what not to eat and what I can eat basically…
I actually started with a diagnoses of menier’es and was given no literature on diet, just told low salt. I went through the process of finding most of triggers on the low salt diet. Then when I was given an MAV diagnoses, it wasn’t that big of a change to my diet, and I had been studying it for so long that I found the remainder of my triggers pretty quick.
Hi Mikael,
When I get back to Australia I’ll send you info on how to do this. I have a dietitian friend who works in Sydney who has done this with a number of her clients.
What makes you think it’s food setting you off? Have you had clear reactions to stuff within 24-48 hours? For some migraineurs – many on this board – food does not seem to be a big issue. Also remember that it can be a combination of triggers that can give the illusion that one sort of food is nasty when it may not be in small doses or on a good day. You may be stressed, exercised too much and then thrown back some chocolate and BAM. It would be easy to pin it ALL on the chocolate. Weeding out food is no easy task unless the effect hits hard and clear. That’s been my experience anyway.
Choosing foods in Thailand is a mine field. MSG is all over the place and in most sauces. Even a stir-fried rice has oyster sauce in it here which means MSG and presevatives. I’m now not convinced it was bananas doing me in but maybe pineapple. Hard to work it all out.
Anyway, hope you get to the bottom of the recent surge in symptoms. It sucks badly I know.
Scott
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Hi Mikael,
When I get back to Australia I’ll send you info on how to do this. I have a dietitian friend who works in Sydney who has done this with a number of her clients.
What makes you think it’s food setting you off? Have you had clear reactions to stuff within 24-48 hours? For some migraineurs – many on this board – food does not seem to be a big issue. Also remember that it can be a combination of triggers that can give the illusion that one sort of food is nasty when it may not be in small doses or on a good day. You may be stressed, exercised too much and then thrown back some chocolate and BAM. It would be easy to pin it ALL on the chocolate. Weeding out food is no easy task unless the effect hits hard and clear. That’s been my experience anyway.
Choosing foods in Thailand is a mine field. MSG is all over the place and in most sauces. Even a stir-fried rice has oyster sauce in it here which means MSG and presevatives. I’m now not convinced it was bananas doing me in but maybe pineapple. Hard to work it all out.
Anyway, hope you get to the bottom of the recent surge in symptoms. It sucks badly I know.
— End quote
I’m not sure food actually is a trigger for me as it hasn’t been in the past; but I got to try something and I could just as well try this before trying a new med (with bad se’s im sure). If I am triggered by food then it’s not the obvious eat stuff → 1 hour later you’re in pain. It’s the more lurky kind.
The fact that most people with migraine don’t have much food-triggers I didn’t know; this actually had me thinking it could not be MAV since I thought all mavers reacted to food. Now I know better 
Hope you figure the banana/pineapple mystery out , and that you can look back at the vacation as a good time mostly, even with the mav.
It does suck.
Hi Mikael,
Check out this list until you receive the bible… I mean the Heal Your Headache Book…lol… Good luck 
lisa
Just found the PDF taken from the Heal Your Headache Book… I have the book & it’s really good (interesting) worth buying! Till you buy here is the PDF …
http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2006/apr/migraine/triggers2.pdf
Mickie