The following is an excerpt from my book The Headache Prevention Cookbook: Eating Right to Prevent Migraines and Other Headaches

Introduction

If you're reading this, chances are that you or someone you know suffers from headaches. Take comfort in knowing that you're not alone! Headaches affect as many as 50 million Americans a year and account for more than 18 million visits to the doctor. In fact, headaches are the leading cause of absence from work; some researchers have estimated that 30 million workdays are lost each year because of the problem.

But numbers do not even begin to tell the story. The pain of a headache can completely disrupt a person's life. I have seen patients whose headaches are so severe that they are afraid to plan activities such as vacations, weddings, dinners, or dates. Their lives center on the dread of the next headache attack. Mary P. is a perfect example. When Mary came to my office, she had suffered from two to three headaches a week since her early twenties. Now that she was forty, her headaches were occurring on a daily basis. She complained of a constant throbbing sensation from the back of her head to her forehead. The headaches had become so severe that she was having difficulty taking care of her seven-year-old daughter and four-year-old son. The constant pain was also taking a toll on her marriage. The only way she could get through a day was by taking a lot of pain medicine.

Like Mary, many patients complain that their suffering is worsened by a feeling of helplessness. They have been told by friends and physicians alike that they will have to "learn to live with it." At one time or another, most headache sufferers have also been told, "It's all in your head." Often they blame themselves for their condition.

The combination of fear, helplessness, and self-criticism can lead to depression and/or the chronic use of pain medication.

Many doctors now think that heredity may play a major part in the underlying cause of headaches. As I often tell my patients, if you really want to cure your headaches, you need to pick your parents better! I suspect that what a person inherits is the predisposition to getting headaches. I think of it like this: Everyone is born with a certain threshold for getting headaches. Some people have such a high threshold that they never get a headache, no matter how many "headache triggers" they are exposed to. Others have a headache threshold that is high enough so that they suffer from headaches only occasionally, and usually only with extreme triggers, such as severe stress or sleep deprivation. Frequent headache sufferers, on the other hand, are very sensitive to trigger factors and may get headaches in response to a multitude of them.

Headache Triggers

Stress, lack of sleep, bright lights, weather changes, and strong odors are all potential headache triggers. But what many people, including many doctors, don't realize is that some of the most common causes of headaches are ordinary foods that most of us eat every day. Avoiding those so-called food triggers can be one of the most effective and least invasive ways to treat headaches, without the risk of side effects and allergies (not to mention the cost) associated with the use of medications. In fact, by just following an appropriate headache-prevention diet, you may be able to get rid of most or all of your headaches!

You may still need to take medication for your pain. But medications have side effects especially when they are taken too frequently. Indeed, one of the most frustrating things about treating headache patients is that they tend to be more sensitive to medications and experience more side effects than people without headaches. Whenever possible, it is ideal to be able to treat headaches without resorting to the use of medication. This is where diet modification is useful.

Diet modification worked for Mary P. After stopping her chronic pain medicines, we were able to identify many food triggers that she had previously been unaware of: Chinese food (even without MSG), cured pork products, aged cheeses, bananas, citrus fruits, and peanut butter cookies. Each of these foods caused a severe headache within hours of consumption. Once Mary identified her headache triggers, she modified her diet to avoid them. Her headaches became less frequent, and her relationships with her husband and children improved dramatically. Mary is just one person who has been helped by eliminating trigger foods from her diet. There are many others... read my case studies