Leaky Gut Syndrome

That's the only thing I am struggling with...cooking. I don't enjoy it.

I don't know if lemon was my trigger, but now I can remove it from my diet and then reintroduce it and see if there is any connection. This would not have been possible if I had a headache 100% of the time.

Lemons and lemonade are definitely a trigger for me. One of the few food triggers I have found.

Dianne.....wow 73 and still working. My hat is off to you girl. I am 69 and working kind of part time but at home. My dh has a small business and I do the bookkeeping and phone answering etc. Getting pretty tired of it as is dh who is 70 but the extra income over our SS is pretty much needed. Anyway I surely understand the too tired to cook thing. It would be nice if someone could come up with some frozen paleo meals to pop in the micro.

Well, I completed the detox phase from the Clean Gut book and today I saw my doctor.  

While I am still getting a headache each day, they are very mild (with one or two exceptions).  Most of the day I do NOT have a headache.  I have not had any migraines.  My 3am headaches are practically gone.  I had two instances where I woke up and noticed I had a mild headache, but nothing like the feeling that it's the headache pain waking me up, as in the past.  The pressure in my head is gone as is the ringing in my ears.  And, I lost 12 lbs.  That's the good.

The bad is....I have tested dairy and it appears it is a trigger.    I was initially very sad about that, but I will learn to eat other foods.  There are a lot of substitutes for milk, but not many edible ones (in my opinion) for cheese.  I have not yet had a pizza craving, so I will cross that bridge when I come to it.  I think I mentioned previously that I planned to stay gluten-free.  I asked my doctor if I could forego testing the gluten since I didn't plan to eat it again and he agreed.  I just do not want to get a headache on purpose because I'm afraid it won't go away.  Though I feel so much better, I have not forgotten what having a headache for three months straight (with migraines sprinkled on top) feels like.

I have added certified gluten free oats back in (a favorite) and it appears they are not a trigger.  I have not added back refined sugar, but have added natural sweeteners (some honey and mostly coconut nectar and/or crystals).  I plan to stay away from refined sugar as well.  Last two things to test:  grains and fruit.  I will be testing the fruit first.  Very slowly...as I feel I have an intolerance to tannins.  We will see if that is true.  I also plan to keep out any preservatives and junk if I can, so I am focusing on whole foods (doing my own little combo of the Clean diet and Paleo diet - both as guidelines only).

As for the medical piece, it's status quo for one more month.  As you may recall, my doctor is a holistic internist and I have some non-traditional things to work on...exercise, de-stressing myself, learning to actually breathe air in and out properly, etc.  I have started acupuncture, but may need to delay that for financial reasons.  I will also be checking a couple more hormone levels with a saliva test, but we're waiting a couple of weeks for that.  

On a personal note, much of my down time is spent learning how to eat GFCF (gluten-free, casein free).  My doctor says I can try goat dairy, but I am not sure if I will yet.  I despise cooking, so that is a learning curve as well.  I thought I hated my tiny kitchen before....UGH.

I plan to keep going on this path.  I feel so much better and I am hoping for some totally headache-free days.  It's not the perfect solution for everyone, but maybe will give some things to try for some of you.  I hope to continue to improve, but it's a guessing game for all of us.  I'm glad I found my doctor and I'm glad I read Clean Gut.  Now to try to incorporate all I have learned and move forward....without milk.   

Jen

Thanks for sharing. I hope you continue with only the mild pain. I've explored some dietary triggers between my headache and my stomach issues. So far I've found I'm sensitive to fructose, which cause some pretty severe stomach issues. Took me awhile to figure that one out. My favorite fruits were high in fructose (apples & watermelon) and I was eating one or the other each morning.

Now as long as I only have 1-2 servings of low fructose fruit (like citrus or kiwi), I do ok. Sadly I haven't found any dietary triggers for my headache yet, but have only tried the standard migraine ones, gluten, and dairy. There are some good dairy free products now, but I agree the cheese ones are lacking.

I think at least my stomach would be better without sugar & flour, but I can't bring myself to do that as long as I can manage the symptoms ok. When they were at their most severe though, I would have given them up if that was what it took. Kinda glad it was just the fruit giving me issues. Best wishes.

Jen, this sounds very promising. I really want to read that book and try the detox. Probably will not be able to till I get home in March but what you say is very encouraging.

Another morning without a migraine. It has been almost a month and while it is still way to early to tell, a gf and very low grain diet may just be the key for me.   

That sounds encouraging Kem! Once you find the source (or at least the biggest source), you won't miss it. I can't explain how much I love drinking milk. It's been my comfort food my whole life and the only thing in all of this that has been hard to give up. However, when I think of getting the headaches back, I don't even want it. I am going longer and longer each day headache-free and have not had a migraine. I am done with the detox as outlined in the book, but I'm doing my reintroduction phase differently than in the book. The book says to add an ingredient, test it, then detox for 3 days, then test your next ingredient. I am adding one ingredient at a time and keeping it if I do well with it (not detoxing in between). I have switched to juicing for breakfast (with a small, fiber filled side serving of gluten-free oats) because I was not enjoying the milk alternatives in my smoothie. Loving the juices, even dark green and gross looking! I am still checking on citrus as a potential trigger. After that, it's time to check other fruits and their damn tannins.   

Aside from my hatred of cooking and my miniscule counter space in my kitchen, this has actually been non-traumatic. I look at gluten and dairy as a big bowl of headaches with migraines sprinkled on top and walk right by all of those ingredients in the store without one look back.

I know this diet change won't be everyone's answer, but I hope maybe a few who read it will try it and have success. No one can truly understand the torture of migraines or chronic headaches unless they have been there.

Hope you stay migraine-free and let me know if you get the book when you get home!

Jen

I will do that Jen. Honestly I can hardly believe I've spent all these years thinking that my whole problem was hormonal and there was nothing I could do about it and now I am seeing that diet is really the likely cause. Eye opening!

I knew mine was! I just had to find a doctor that agreed to help me figure it out! I would have never guessed gluten or dairy, since I have no stomach issues.

Good luck Kem!

Thanks Jen and to you also!

Thought I'd drop in with a status update. Still no migraines since eliminating gluten and dairy and doing the detox from the book. I haven't added grain or refined sugar (I use honey, maple or coconut sweeteners as I do not like stevia) back into my diet yet and have still not tested most fruits, though I am tolerating granny smith apples pretty well. I still do get a mild headache (non-migraine) every day and sometimes moderate ones that are very stubborn and hard to get rid of. Honestly, I'm not too interested in testing more foods because the thought of getting a headache on purpose is just something I can't seem to make myself do. I'm still really wondering about citrus, lemon especially, but every time I think about it, I say "no, I feel good now, I don't want to risk ruining it."

The black circles under my eyes are continuing to fade and I am now sleeping pretty well. I hadn't realized just how bad my sleep was interrupted before. I used to wake up several times in the middle of the night just not feeling well and usually with my 3am headache.

I'm doing well with my "new normal" diet and my hatred of cooking is the only thing that's getting in the way. I miss milk less and less, but still have not found an alternative I like as a beverage, so I am drinking only water at the moment. I use mostly almond milk for recipes. There are SO many gluten-free/casein-free recipe resources out there and I'm feeling pretty good about my permanent diet change (though I have not yet had a pizza craving) and I don't feel deprived like I thought I might. I would like to conquer my regular headaches, but am feeling pretty happy that I seem to have at least found an answer to my migraines.

Still on the Vitamin D, Migrelief and Pregnenolone supplements. Not sure when my levels for Vitamin D and Pregnenolone will be checked again.

Basically, I'm not interested in changing a thing.

Jen

Thank you for the update Jen. I have been having a set back and am going to have to take cheese out of my diet I think. I also added back in some non gluten containing grains and likely should get rid of those as well. Getting very anxious to go home again where it will be a lot easier to stock my kitchen and cook properly. This condo has the poorest equipped kitchen I've ever seen in a rental condo. Also I don't want to stock up on a lot of things that would have to be tossed out or taken home with us in an already packed car.

Jen, are you still around? How are you doing? I was rereading these pages and thinking it's time for me to do a drastic elimination diet similar to what you describe.

Reama

Hi all,

First of all let me say I am not a migraine sufferer.  (So far at least).  My reason for posting is that I believe I have some very important information about leaky gut and how it affects migraine.  Some excellent books on this subject have been mentioned on this thread along with some good advice and having had a read of the forum there is some excellent advice on how diet affects migraine.

I am a French to English translator and a health nut.  I recently translated a book by the daughters of a famous French doctor and yes,  you guessed it,    I am on here to give it a plug!  I read carefully the forum rules and there does not seem to be anything against this,  so I hope members and the moderators will not be offended.  

The book in question is called :

How to prevent & reverse 100 diseases the new French way with Dr. Seignalet's diet miracle by Anne Seignalet and Dr. Dominique Seignalet

It is available in paperback on Amazon.  A Kindle version is currently in the works and should be available in the next week or so.  We will be doing the Kindle version free for a limited time so if you have a limited budget,  keep checking for the Kindle version.

It is a concise and easy to read guide  written by Anne and Dr. Dominique Seignalet based on a huge medical/scientific treatise (800 pages packed with diagrams and tables) written by their father,  Dr. Jean Seignalet (deceased).  Jean Seignalet is pronounced (roughly) "Shon Saynalay".  Dr. Seignalet was a professor at the medical faculty of Montpellier and among other things was one of the first experts in the then emerging field of Human Leukocyte Antigens.

As with other books on leaky gut and how it affects disease and how diet affects leaky gut,  Seignalet puts forward a specific diet.  Not only that but he treated 2,500 patients with the diet over a period of twenty years and kept meticulous notes.  He treated 57 patients with migraine and 41 went into complete remission,  12 had 80/90% improvements and there were 4 failures (btw I have just looked at the tables in the slim book and some errors have crept in which will be rectified in the next day or two).  With tension headaches he treated 15 patients with 11 complete remissions, 3 x 80/90% improvements and 1 failure.   So the diet is not infallible but the beauty of the book is that it is based on such thorough research by a Doctor/biologist/scientific researcher at the top of his game.   By looking at the tables you can get a very good idea of just how successful the diet is likely to be for you.  Not given in the small book but spelled out in the main book (which I will be translating soon) are reasons why the diet sometimes fails or is less than 100% successful.  Among these reasons are candida (Seignalet advises to read specialist book on this subject if you suspect candida) dental infections and bronchial infections (which all affect the gut of course).  As a health nut,  I would add that parasites might also be a cause - particularly tape worms.  

So to conclude:
1)  I believe that this is the most scientific book on leaky gut.  No-one could accuse Seignalet of being a quack.  (If there are any accusers,  let's put their medical and/or scientific qualifications up against Seignalet and see who wins!)
2)  It explains exactly how and why leaky gut occurs.
3)  The diet is based on 20 years of practical research with patients,  not just on scientific theories.  So for example,  he discovered that so called "ancestral" grains like spelt must also be eliminated.  (Interestingly,  his diet seemed to work on gluten resistant types of Celiac although he did not have enough patients to draw definitive conclusions on this group.)

My advice would be by all means look into other factors (there is a good thread on virgin coco nut oil on here for example) but you should definitely read the book and follow the diet.  Results are sometimes amazingly quick although a handful of  people had to follow the diet for two years to see results.  The diet is not a cure.  It has to be followed for life to maintain remission.

I hope this post is useful.  I don't personally know anyone who suffers from migraine but I personally have had  episodes of dizzy spells and nausea about 3 years ago where nothing I could do or think of would stop it.  The room would spin for hours and I would throw up again and again until I was literally dry retching.   Thank God the episodes only lasted a couple of months (apparently the ear makes adjustments) but it allows me somewhat to put myself in the shoes of a migraine sufferer.   I hope this thread and my post leads to further discussion and I will be popping back regularly to see if I can contribute anything.

Cheers Chris Parkinson

Hi Jen,
I've been suffering and struggling with Leaky Gut Syndrome for several years. Thankfully I have an incredible doctor who is a functional medicine specialist that is assisting me with the lengthy healing process. I suffered from migraines well before developing a leaky gut, but when my stomach became seriously dysfunctional the result was that my migraines took over my life. Leaky gut is very complex and can be caused by many variables. For sure a dysfunctional gut can cause migraines. In addition to being tested for food allergies / intolerances, I advise you to get tested for exposure to heavy metals and toxins. Food in America is seriously dangerous; it's been genetically modified, polluted with chemicals, and has little nutritional value. The best you can do is to eat organic, non-processed food. I have not eaten any grains, sugar, caffeine, corn and dairy in over 2 years - it's hard but I'm willing to do ANYTHING to rid myself of migraines and constant stomach pain. As my stomach heals so does my head. I hope you continue healing.

Sayarma wrote:Hi Jen,
..........  I suffered from migraines well before developing a leaky gut, but when my stomach became seriously dysfunctional the result was that my migraines took over my life.  Leaky gut is very complex and can be caused by many variables.  For sure a dysfunctional gut can cause migraines.  .......    

If Seignalet is right (and he surely is) then your leaky gut caused your migraines. There may be other factors like dental infection, cavitations, mercury amalgams, candida, parasites etc. but the first thing to do is try the Seignalet diet because Seignalet treated 57 migraine sufferers and 41 had complete remissions with 12 at 80/90% improvements and only 4 failures. Only if it fails or you don't get the full remission do you really need to look further for other causes. The Seignalet diet will also cure your stomach problems. 63 patients were treated for Dyspepsia with the diet, 62 total remissions, 1 50% improvement, no failures.

Cheers Chris

Candida love sugars and the liver stores a lot of it. Candida is probably damaging your liver cells and cannot work as well as it should, the efficiency decreases, and certain foods that you have trouble with cannot get processed and triggers a chemical change. Look at your blood tests and your ALT and AST should be less than 30. There are a lot of liver congestion symptoms that should correlate. Talk to your holistic doctor and get the candida under control. Black Seed oil is very effective.