3 ms·

I had severe migraines in high school through my early 20's, in addition to a 1 month bout of cluster headaches (you don't want those!), my triggers were MSG (y

I had severe migraines in high school through my early 20's, in addition to a 1 month bout of cluster headaches (you don't want those!), my triggers were MSG (yes I know people say its perfectly fine, but I experimented and was able to show it affected me, all those years of studying Chemistry...) and bright sunshine reflections. I made sure I ate food with little or no MSG, and always wore strong sunglasses outside, which helped reduce them a lot. The connection to MSG is clearly controversial given how much the food industry loves using it to smooth out taste in prepared foods, but it seems to not affect most people, so it didn't bother me as long as I could identify its inclusion. In the the past 30+ years they have decreased in frequency and severity; now other than the aura (20 minutes of weird vision) the headache is at most a simple Tylenol one. Triggers can be almost anything that affects the brain in some way; given this research it's clear that what affects people with migraine potential does not affect those with different genetics. Very often genetics plays a large role in how your body reacts to stimulus and food and diseases, but also that many genetic adaptations have both good and bad sides, so perhaps migraines gave our ancestors some benefit, and we pay the price lying on the couch in the dark.

ses1984 5y ago
Are you triggered by foods that naturally contain msg?
Tarragon 5y ago
> bout of cluster headaches (you don't want those!) Oh, now you tell me... "Cluster headache is among the most severe pains known to mankind." [1] Cluster headaches to generally thought to be neurological compared to migraines which are generally considered vascular. I guess by this article, indirectly vascular. Cluster headaches are significantly rarer than migraines. Only a very very few get both. You should have gotten a lottery ticket that month. Glad it faded. [1] https://www.practicalpainmanagement.com/pain/headache/cluster-headache/cluster-headache https://www.practicalpainmanagement.com/pain/headache/cluste...
WorldMaker 5y ago
MSG was the first taste bud science was able to isolate on the tongue because MSG is a messaging enzyme in neurochemistry and it turns out that the taste bud very physically resembles the brain receptors. In a similar way to caffeine, the brain requires a moderate amount of MSG to function, but can easily be over-stimulated. The reason for all the "perfectly fine" "controversy" with MSG is that there's still no known allergy to it, and the early proponents of "MSG allergies" were quacks using bad science for racist reasons (despite it being a naturally occurring substance, and a required enzyme in the brain). So overall it is much less controversial to say that MSG is a known migraine trigger in some people. It's still "safe", migraines so far as we know are rarely life-threatening even if sometimes you do feel like you are going to die. You mostly just need to acknowledge that as a trigger it varies greatly among people. The analogy to caffeine is an extremely useful one as caffeine is also "generally recognized to be fine/safe/not an allergy", but too little caffeine and too much caffeine (and caffeine withdrawal) can all be migraine triggers or migraine relievers depending on what side of it you are on. (Most over-the-counter "migraine medication" if you check the ingredients is just a dose of generic Tylenol and a shot of caffeine because the most common migraines in America are often the withdrawal state or the too little state and it isn't likely to make it worse if you are in the too much state already, unless too much is on the edge of a caffeine OD and you have more life threatening problems.) It plays the other way sometimes too: sometimes I crave foods high in MSG when I have a migraine and that will settle the migraine some.

ses1984 5y ago

Are you triggered by foods that naturally contain msg?

Tarragon 5y ago

> bout of cluster headaches (you don't want those!) Oh, now you tell me... "Cluster headache is among the most severe pains known to mankind." [1] Cluster headaches to generally thought to be neurological compared to migraines which are generally considered vascular. I guess by this article, indirectly vascular. Cluster headaches are significantly rarer than migraines. Only a very very few get both. You should have gotten a lottery ticket that month. Glad it faded. [1] https://www.practicalpainmanagement.com/pain/headache/cluster-headache/cluster-headache https://www.practicalpainmanagement.com/pain/headache/cluste...

WorldMaker 5y ago

MSG was the first taste bud science was able to isolate on the tongue because MSG is a messaging enzyme in neurochemistry and it turns out that the taste bud very physically resembles the brain receptors. In a similar way to caffeine, the brain requires a moderate amount of MSG to function, but can easily be over-stimulated. The reason for all the "perfectly fine" "controversy" with MSG is that there's still no known allergy to it, and the early proponents of "MSG allergies" were quacks using bad science for racist reasons (despite it being a naturally occurring substance, and a required enzyme in the brain). So overall it is much less controversial to say that MSG is a known migraine trigger in some people. It's still "safe", migraines so far as we know are rarely life-threatening even if sometimes you do feel like you are going to die. You mostly just need to acknowledge that as a trigger it varies greatly among people. The analogy to caffeine is an extremely useful one as caffeine is also "generally recognized to be fine/safe/not an allergy", but too little caffeine and too much caffeine (and caffeine withdrawal) can all be migraine triggers or migraine relievers depending on what side of it you are on. (Most over-the-counter "migraine medication" if you check the ingredients is just a dose of generic Tylenol and a shot of caffeine because the most common migraines in America are often the withdrawal state or the too little state and it isn't likely to make it worse if you are in the too much state already, unless too much is on the edge of a caffeine OD and you have more life threatening problems.) It plays the other way sometimes too: sometimes I crave foods high in MSG when I have a migraine and that will settle the migraine some.