The Relationship Between Migraine and Nutrition

Abstract

Migraine is a kind of headache accompanied by neurologic, gastrointestinal, and autonomous variations. The roles of factors that trigger migraine, especially nutrition triggers, have become much more questionable with the increase in the rate of migraine occurrence. Some patients with migraine have stated that their headache attacks start without any reason. However, inner triggers such as hormonal changes or external triggers such as air exchange, some smells or the association of both triggers can start the headache. Each patient may not have same sensitivity to these triggers. A single factor might become prominent in some patients, but more than one factor may need to be required in other patients. Although the connection between migraine and the factors such as stress, environmental factors, chronic diseases, and nutritional and sleep status has been known, their mechanisms are still not clear. Nutritional status and the effects of nutrition play an important role being pain triggers in everybody, especially children and young people who suffer from migraine headache. Considering the migraine triggers generally, it has been suggested in studies that there is at least one nutrition-related trigger and hunger is the most frequently reported trigger in terms of diet. Moreover it is known that chocolate, tea, coffee, cheese, and alcohol may trigger migraine because of some specific elements within them. In recently conducted studies, using some functional foods have raised on the treatment of migraine. For this reason, the relationship between migraine and triggering factors as food and nutrition are examined in this study.