Another trigger: Sucralose

Well, just when I get a diet that seems to reduce my migraines, the food processing conglomerates change the ingredients of foods and I get more migraines. This round I have narrowed it down to Sucralose. Sucralose is a synthetic artificial sweetener that is suspected by many in the medical community to cause headaches and migraines. But of course the FDA and all the other paid off agencies say its 'safe'. Well, except tests using rats fed Sucralose which show that it changes DNA in the gut. Sucralose is turning up in more and more products that have sugar in it. Seemingly sugar alone is just not enough, they have to pump it full of synthetic sugar as well. Typical products that have Sucralose in it are Shasta soda (diet and regular), Quaker instant oat meal packages, Splenda sweetener (it is pure Sucralose), many flavored yogurts, many canned fruits, ice creams, syrups, etc. etc. etc.

This is from the LiveStrong web site:
Sucralose may be a trigger for migraines, according to a study published in the August, 2006 issue of ''Headache: Journal of Head and Face Pain.'' Physicians should keep the potential causal relationship between sucralose and migraines in mind when they are taking the health history of people who suffer migraines, recommends lead study author Rajendrakumar M. Patel of the Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, Georgia.

zomigman, this is exactly why one must ready each and every label of each and every processed/prepared food.  so much crap is sneaked in past us unsuspecting migraineurs.  

it's good you have found one more thing to avoid.  personally, i have been avoiding all the MSG ingredients, (50 or so of those), citric acid (which is in soooo many things) and basically anything that isn't really a food ingredient.  michael pollan, famous writer of enlightening and highly readable food books, calls them "food-like substances".  

it pays to be vigilant.  no one without this hideous pain could possibly understand how careful we have to be.  too bad; we do what we have to do, even though it is a huge bunch of trouble.  dianne

Indeed. I am being forced into a mostly non-processed food diet, and a low sodium when I do buy canned food diet. No more sodas and canned beverages. Almost all of them have sucralose or some other fake sugar in them and many have artificial color and flavors. Many are also high in tannin, and in the case of CountryTime Lemonade, there is not even any lemon in it at all! WTF is that about? Very few canned soups do not have MSG or tons of salt. Progresso soups are OK for the most part, but they are expensive. I make my own chicken stock and freeze it. Very few canned meats do not have MSG or artificial additives, and meats tend to gain tyramine as they age in cans. Costco Tuna and low sodium tuna seem to be OK for me. Most tuna has vegetable, soy or meat broth, which is really another name for rendered down MSG. All but one brand of spaghetti sauce I could find on the shelf at WinCo has MSG: Francesco Renaldi, which is pretty good w/o all the added crap. Potato and corn chips are pretty bad, and most are loaded with salt and MSG. A few are OK, mainly the low sodium ones. Fritos are still just corn and oil and salt, but they are really salty and I get the low sodium Fritos. Low salt Triscuts are also OK. I buy pasta in bulk which is made from whole wheat flour, or I make my own from all wheat flour. Most flour and breads are made with barley now, and barley is a source of tannins. I eat all whole wheat breads now, as they are made mainly with wheat flour. I was buying frozen waffles, but they changed the formula late last year and added annatto for color. So I bought a Belgian waffle maker and I make my own waffles from scratch now. I can make up a batch and freeze them.

Which is the segway to my large change that I made last year. I buy large lots of meats and cut them into portions and freeze them. Freezing meats prevents the formation of tyramine, as well as prevents the meat from going bad to bacteria (well, maybe with exception to Foster Farms, which has had terrible issues with bacteria and cockroaches in their processing plants in CA of late). I had to cut out buying ground turkey, because they add MSG to that now (in the form of "natural flavor"). All brats now have MSG in them, so I stopped eating them. I get a non-processed ground pork in bulk that does not trigger my migraines. I make it into patties and put them in plastic bags and freeze them. I buy the double bags of chickens, cut them in half, and freeze each half in bags. For some reason whole pork meat seems to give me M's. I do not know why... pre-processing? Aged too long? Hard to tell why. I can tolerate low sodium bacon, but I keep that to a minimum. The price of bacon is so high lately I stopped eating it for now.

I switched from eating red to white kidney beans. No tannins in white beans. I stopped drinking wine. I love the stuff, but that keeps me on the edge of M's too much. Some lager beers are OK for me, like Corona and Stella Artois. They and German Pilsner beers are all low in tannins (tannins are considered a defect in German lagers). Coors always gives me headaches, as do most ales. I could go on and on... I try to avoid: tannins/dyes, tyramine (aged meats and cheese), MSG/high sodium, and now the many artificial sugars (now loaded into non-diet everything that has sugar). *sigh* time to write my book on migraines I guess.   

Just smelling pork cooking (don't even need to eat it) has always (from childhood on) given me a headache, especially pork chops broiling or grilling; lamb chops too.