Think Chocolate causes migraines?

Do you love chocolate but are too scared to eat it for fear of triggering a migraine? Tired of not knowing why you’ve got another migraine and uncertain about what you can eat?

“There is insufficient evidence that chocolate is a migraine trigger”

Migraines are not a lot of fun – unilateral pulsating, severe headaches that last from 4 to 72 hours, with accompanying nausea, photophobia, phonophobia and sometimes even transient neurological symptoms – something you wouldn’t even wish upon your enemies……maybe!

The biggest inconvenience with migraines is that they are a chronic disorder with debilitating episodic attacks – that is they just keep re-occurring.

Migraines often occur without rhyme or reason, and if you’re like most, you’re probably constantly on the lookout for triggers – patterns in your life that create your migraines. The list of triggers often becomes long and complex, particularly as triggers don’t always cause a migraine.

For most, the trigger list always ends up including foods. From my experience, the longer and more severe the migraines people suffer with the more extensive their lists become and the more limited their diets become.

The food avoidance list, either through recommendation or experience, will for most undoubtable include chocolate – which is probably just as devastating for you as everyone else.

But the constant fear of “is this going to cause a migraine” in the back of your head dominates each thought of eating a beautiful succulent piece of heaven!

Well, there’s some research that might just become your best friend! A recent review of chocolate and migraine which I thought would be worth sharing.

If you’re keen to know, I’ve summarized the key findings of the paper for you below.

After thoroughly reviewing the amazing article, the most interesting findings were:

1.  Although some people may be sensitive or intolerant to certain foods, research has not demonstrated a consistent link with any food component
2.  Dietary cocoa significantly suppressed the expression of proteins implicated in the underlying pathology of migraine and TMJ disorders
3. All provocative studies have failed to confirm that chocolate can trigger migraine attacks
4. Many possible mechanisms through which chocolate can influence migraines exist, and more are beneficial than unfavourable

In my opinion, based on years of successfully helping migraine sufferers, triggers are just that – something that tips an aggravated nervous system over to induce a migraine. They are not the underlying cause of nervous system dysfunction, so removing them will generally have little effect on your migraines.

That said, there will be something that will be causing the aggravated system to tip over and induce a migraine.

Chocolate has been unfortunately associated with migraines because of its consumption in a temporal nature prior to the onset of migraines. The thing that has been overlooked in the consumption of chocolate is the why?

Is there a reason that people are consuming chocolate? It could be emotional, metabolic, neurologic or another systemic problem. These are questions that would shed more light on the possible underlying causes of migraines.

So what can you do?

You can either continue to modify suspected activities and remove suspected foods and hope that the next thing you change will be the one that results in the migraines stopping, OR, alternatively, you could endeavour to find out the underlying components that are contributing to your aggravated nervous system. Then seek to resolve the components involved and thus calm down the aggravated nervous system at the source making these so called triggers no longer relevant.

But if you’re lost, don’t know what to do or want to talk about the possible components affecting your aggravated nervous system just comment below, give us a call on 9318 7758 or I’m happy to have a one on one chat with you to help you identify the potential cause of your migraines. . Just 👉👉 click here 👈👈 and you’ll be able to book a time in my calendar directly. Oh, and before you ask, no there’s no fee for this time, I’d just be happy to help you out.