I've dealt with chronic migraines for years. Completely cured them via diet alone. Foods I eat liberally:
- A2 dairy
- Beef
- Gelatin
- Sugar
- Honey
- Maple Syrup
- Dates
- Cherries
- Oranges (+juice)
- Salt
- Coffee
- Cocoa
- Well-cooked greens
- Cooked onions
- Butter
- Coconut oil
- Beef Tallow
- Heavy cream
- Garnishes: cilantro, parsley, rosemary, etc.
- Boiled mushrooms
- Oysters
- Balsamic Vinegar
- Lemons (+juice)
- Limes (+juice)
- Watermelon
Foods I eat in moderation, if I crave them:
- Raw carrots
- Eggs
- Extra Virgin Organic Olive Oil
- Macadamia Nuts
- Lean Fish
- Bread
- Ice Cream
- Rice
- Macadamia Oil
- Yogurt
- Apples
- Grapes
- Bananas
- Good quality wine
I've 'megadosed' many foods and seen really bad responses to certain ones. With this as my barometer, here are the things I avoid that otherwise seem sensible:
- Potatoes
- Undercooked greens
- Avocados
- Avocado Oil
- Nuts (except macadamia)
- Seeds
- Chicken
- Pork
- Fatty Fish
- Any processed 'high-protein' products
Things I never even let get near my mouth:
- Anything fried
- Canola Oil
- Soybean Oil
- Corn Oil
- Sunflower Oil
- Safflower Oil
- Peanut Oil
- Sesame Oil
- Cottonseed Oil
- Vegetable Oil
I think this boils down to a few things:
- Low PUFA
- Low starch
- Good nutrient density
- High salt
- High sugar
- Low fat
- Moderate protein
- Water to thirst
I was still getting migraines on animal-based diets when including tubers, avocados, chicken, pork, fish, and starchy fruits.
Removing those remaining sources of PUFA and starch and adding a huge amount of sugar and salt was the final piece of the puzzle. The last time I had a migraine was before I did the 'honey diet,' where I was eating a pound of honey every day. I've been migraine-free since Sept of 2023, and this marks the longest I've ever gone.
I felt very good eating ~5000 calories of ice cream daily, but it made me fat. The low fat part, thus, is to prevent weight gain, but saturated fats don't seem to trigger migraines for me. When I gained the same amount of fat eating fried foods, I felt like death 24/7.
A high-fat fried food diet seems to be the worst for me, while a low-fat, high-sugar, saturated fat-only diet seems to be the best.
One thing that I noticed is that the Randle effect ('cycle') is real. With a CGM, eating 2000 calories of sugar with little to no protein/fat, I burned it all off within 2 hours -- I went back down to a blood sugar of ~90 before dinner. When I ate 200 calories of sugar with a fatty dinner, my blood sugar was slightly >100 all night. I think that delaying any fat intake until dinner, and loading up on sugar primarily throughout the day is very effective at raising the metabolic rate. It's how I lost all the fat from the ice cream diet failure.
Excessive protein may also inhibit carbohydrate's effect on the metabolic rate, as I've anecdotally experienced and seen in friends, though I don't know the mechanism past FGF21 inhibition.
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- anabology