high proteins foods and migraines

I had migraines since i was a teenager, once a week, now more and more. lately i went on a very restrictive macrobiotic diet. i started with boiled rice and wheat. it worked like a charm, no more headaches. i added more and more things and i discovered that my triggers are high protein foods. legumes (beans, soy, lentils), seeds(pupkin, nuts), DAIRY, egg white, and meat.

buckwheat would be an alternative because it contains essential amino acids, but it gives me a lot of gas, but i will keep researching into this. one can't live without essential amino acids provided by the things that are triggers for me.

i went to a GI doctor. she said it is not the stomach , it is not food intolerance but these proteins are triggers, they just mess up with my neurological disease, the migraine. they trigger certain hormones, neurotransmitters, blood vessels.

i keep thinking, maybe i miss a certain enzyme that deals with a certain amino-acid? first i thought it is the lack of hypochlorhydric acid in the stomach, this acid is something to do with the protein's digestion. indeed, if i take this acid with meat, i don't get the migraines. it probably triggers a certain enzyme. the doctor says that this is not true, it is just the placebo effect in my head, because my blood tests don't show a lack of acid activity in my stomach. (that would mean anemia, too).

i have researched into this since 1st of January 2010 (because of the effect of christmas food, of course). since then, i was on elimination diets, trying acid, getting stomach gas from it. i am now 90 pounds and i am still eating badly, because of too little proteins. i don't quite know what do do next.
the only medicine i take is diazepam on for the pain. the only other conditions i have is advanced hypothyroidism, i take thyroid hormone (and i became more and more hypothyroid from not eating enough proteins) and mild gerd.

has anyone had a similar experience?

alice, this is truly terrible. but then it's also great that you have figured out how to lessen your head pain.

i've been on every diet known to man and woman through the past 41 years, NOT for weight loss, but for finding the keys to my head. macrobiotics did little for me except make me skinny.

my only thought for you is that when a person is allergic to a food, it is to the PROTEIN PART of the food. there's some protein in everything; even celery. i knew a lady who almost died because of eating a hidden piece of celery in a casserole.

perhaps you should think about extensive food allergy/intolerance testing. it's been vastly improved since i had it many years ago. at that time, it was not reproducible; meaning i could get tested again and all the results would be different.

i think your GI doctor may be badly informed about the hydrochloric acid connection. blood tests cannot, to my knowledge, assess this; you need specific measurements of actual stomach contents. if taking a reasonable amount of HCL actually helps you, then why not do it?

if i'm wrong here, i'm sure someone will correct me, but this is what i found upon research years ago: THE SYMPTOMS OF TOO LITTLE ACID AND TOO MUCH ACID ARE THE SAME. and not everyone with too little acid is anemic!

i surely think your doctor puts too much faith in the placebo effect. it's chemistry, people, don't you agree?

milo, whattya think? dianne

oh, thank you for your answer!
my doc said that the stomach tests are always inconclusive, and only the blood proteins tests and b12 vitamin tests are good for the HCl . Indeed, she concluded i have too much acid. the acid helps me digest proteins, but it makes my stomach upset for a day or 2. hard to understand

i will ask her about the allergy tests. I had the ones on the arm done and they seemed fine. there must be more.
maybe she is right though about triggers. but she should eliminate the other possibilities first, shouldn't she?

go to an ENT doctor who specializes in food sensitivities. yes, i do think your present doc's a bit glib in her pronouncements, and should explore other possibilities with your case. dianne

I am surprised about the soy. I drink soy milk and I believe it has a good amount of magnesium in it and I have also been taking Calcium, Magnesium and Zinc supplements and haven't had a migraine in over a month. I am not sure if there is a correlation or if it is just a coincidence for me. I did read that magnesium is helpful to migraine sufferers though and so I decided to try it and so far so good.

The ENT doctor hasn't found allergies by making that test on the arm, so she suggested the elimination diets that i tried at her suggestion. What the ENT found was a stuffy nose that mimicked sinusitis, without being a real sinusitis, this is why she suspected allergy.

but , since the migraine is about dilated vessels in the head, maybe it dilates the vessels in the nose as well, so the nose stuffiness could be the cause or the symptom of a migraine as well.

it is not about soy or meat, or this and that, it is about all the high protein foods that contain more or less all the essential amino acids.

why do i have to wonder about these things and the doctors don't?

to make things more complicated, it could be not only allergies, but a totally different matter. This article shows that some regular amino acids that migraneurs have in excess are neuro excitatory for us. my head spins

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1526-4610.1999.3909644.x/pdf

alice, we have to worry about these things and the doctors don't, because........they aren't the ones who are suffering!!

i wish i could read the article you cited, but it requires a subscription, i guess. speaking about excitatory and neurotoxic substances, do check out thoroughly the msg/migraine connection. the best site i've found is www.msgmyth.com. dianne

no, it doesn't require a subscription.
my diet has consisted in the last years of very simple things, whole foods only, from fear of chemicals like the one you mentioned. it didn't make much difference though.

I got the message that the cite required a subscription, too.

I don't know why i can see the article.
I am pasting here the abstract of the article

Amino acids in the saliva of patients with migraine.

Rajda C, Tajti J, Komoróczy R, Seres E, Klivényi P, Vécsei L.

Department of Neurology, Albert Szent-Györgyi Medical University, PO Box 71, H-6701 Szeged, Hungary.:

There are a number of hypotheses concerning the pathogenesis of migraine, but they are frequently conflicting. In addition to the vascular hypothesis, clinical data are available that excitatory amino acids may play an important role in the development of the disease. In this study, free amino acid concentrations were measured by RP-HPLC in the saliva of 23 migraineurs without aura, 14 migraineurs with aura, and 20 healthy subjects. Significantly higher concentrations of glutamic acid, serine, glycine, arginine, and tyrosine were found in the saliva samples of both groups of migraineurs relative to the control group. It is suggested that amino acids causing hyperexcitability in the central nervous system may be linked to the pathogenesis of migraine.

I found it here http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11279959

since high protein foods give me migraines, i am thinking that it is maybe related to the content of this article.