By Andy Kress
Migraines are a paroxysmal affliction that have plagued the world with painful headaches since recorded medical history.
People who suffer from this disease are stricken with pain on one side of the head, along with radiant eye pain and loss of appetite, making the most menial tasks seem like big jobs. Migraine sufferers will show this defined pattern of events daily, weekly, monthly or periodically throughout the year. Living through the torment of this raging pain leaves many of its victims in a wake of depression and malnutrition. Yet, being under the harsh grip of this painful tension headache does not have to be so for intelligent, methodical, and perfection-minded people who suffer from it.
Ironically, migraine sufferers often unknowingly bring this problem on themselves through their busy daily lifestyles. Most cases are caused by low blood sugar, infection, allergies, over-intake of certain drugs and chemicals, over working, low energy from loss of appetite, improper sleep and over-consumption of tobacco, alcohol, and sex. Other outside stimulations like excessive light, eye strain, fear, fright or anger, and resentment after hard work can bring on migraine symptoms. Knowing that most of the conditions that create a migraine are caused by our own actions, it becomes easier to find a cure through behavior modification. Nutrition also plays a part.
Having a balanced diet along with a balanced lifestyle is a sure-fire way to eliminate the unbearable symptoms that migraines can cause.
However, due to the fact that migraines cause a lack of appetite and lower energy levels, this will be no easy task. With any kind of successful treatment plan you need to fix or repair the organism as a whole. Doing this will require you to make a change to get a change. Changing the internal environment of the body to relieve migraine suffering will require an internal cleansing of the body to restore its overall vitality. This part is easy, requiring only a little time and effort. Changing your stressful environment is a different story.
People suffering from migraine tension first need to detox the body with a special cleansing ritual. The cleansing should start with two to three day fasting, consuming only orange juice and water taken every two hours for a 12-hour time period each day.
Alternative juices that are acceptable during this cleaning are celery, carrot and cucumber. After the juice fasting, an all fruit diet should be incorporated for the next five days. Taking in three meals a day of fresh juicy apples, pineapples, melons, grapes, grapefruits, oranges, peaches and pears is the ideal diet. No other foods should be taken at this time or it will compromise the overall effect of the detoxification. After finishing the terms of the five-day all-fruit fasting, a well balanced diet should be instated. This diet should consist of nuts, seeds, grains, fruits and vegetables. In time, the diet should be supplemented with milk and dairy products, vegetable oils and honey. Short periods of the all-fruit diet may be needed for a month or two down the road to eradicate any future migraine from reoccurring.
A well-balanced dietary plan is imperative for keeping any future migraine episodes at bay. The new diet must become a lifestyle choice, and perpetuated. Never, ever go back to eating refined cereals, sugars and sweets, for fatty and refined foods will only offset the body and send it right back into the state from which it came. Please choose wisely. You are what you eat!
Andy Kress is a certified fitness trainer, yoga instructor and nutritional counselor in Fort Lauderdale, FL. For more nutritional tips or inspired
exercise routines, reach him at 954-789-3930 or via email at andyfitnesstrainer@gmail.com
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Seriously? Migraine is a neurological condition of unknown origin. Tension headaches are an entirely different headache disorder. It is irresponsible journalism to mix the two. Cite your sources so we can properly evaluate the accuracy of the information you present. As for the “detox” regimen that you suggest…if you knew anything about migraines you would realize that fasting is one of the worst things a migraineur can do. Additionally, orange juice is often a trigger as is contains tyramine, a known migraine trigger. Get your facts straight. Start with a visit to The National Headache Foundation at http://www.headaches.org or The American Headache Society at http://www.americanheadachesociety.org. Educate yourself before you try blaming people for their illness. If it were that simple many of us would be cured. I have been a practicing herbalist for over 15 years and have seen miracles as a result of healthy eating and proper use of nutritional supplements. None of this has ever put a dent in migraines. You obviously have never experienced a migraine or you wouldn’t be so non-chalant about your recommendations.
Mr. Kress;
There is so much misinformation about Migraines already online. Please, do some research rather than adding to it and taking this blame-the-patient attitude. Allow me to point to a few problems with your article…
1) You call Migraines “painful tension headaches” in your second paragraph. Migraines and tension-type headache are two very different headache disorders.
2) You talk about causes when it’s important not to confuse cause with triggers. Migraine is a genetic neurological disease caused by genetics and neurons that respond to triggers. What you list are triggers.
3) Some of what you list are indeed avoidable Migraine triggers, but there are those that can’t be avoided such as barometric pressure changes, hormonal shifts, and more.
4) A balanced diet and lifestyle is “a sure-fire way to eliminate the unbearable symptoms that migraines can cause” for only a very few people – those who have only a few simple, identifiable triggers. Unfortunately, for millions of other Migraineurs, it’s not so simple.
In addition, this “blame the patient” attitude worsens the stigma associated with this disease.
Please consider how you would feel if someone who knew little about fitness training, yoga, or nutrition published an article on one of those topics that was full of misinformation. Please consider correcting this article.
Teri Robert
Dude you are so out of touch with reality it’s not funny! Get a clue. I’ve lived with the devil migraines since I was 8. For the last 6 years they have been chronic. I follow my doctors advice, I eat right and avoid all of my known triggers. I get enough sleep and I exercise.
You know NOTHING about migraines! Everything I read tells me you have done little to NO research. You wouldn’t last a month in my pain filled life. And the truly sad part is that someone will see this article and take it as gospel truth.
Are you serious??? I have had chronic migraines for over 30 years. I have a very good diet, avoiding refined foods, chemicals, additives, gluten, and cooking 99% of my food from scratch yet I still get 10 or more migraines a month. If I did your detox diet I would spend the entire time with a raging migraine because I am not getting enough nutrition.
I exercise 4-5 times a week so along with my very good diet, I am controlling as many triggers that I can, yet still have frequent migraine attacks. Why? Because Migraine Disease is a neurological disease!! It is not a tension problem. It is a brain chemistry imbalance.
By putting out such a misleading article you make it appear that migraine disease can be controlled by diet and exercise. NOT SO. You are adding to the stigma and plethora of misleading and inaccurate information about a neurological disease. PLEASE do not imply that we bring this on ourselves because of our stressful lifestyle and crappy diets. Those of us who have suffered from this debilitating disease do not appreciate having someone with no medical training or expertise with migraine disease telling us how we can cure ourselves solely with diet and exercise. They help maintain a healthy lifestyle but will not cure migraine disease.
Dear Mr Kress, I have no idea where you pretend to get your information, but I presume you must have made it up. You seem to have absolutely no knowledge of migraine illness or the different types of migraine or of nutrition. Your ideas that migraneurs bring their headaches upon themselves is not only insulting but also absurd. Have you ever spoken to a neurologist who specializes in headache disorders? Have you ever read a book on the subject? And if any person with diabetes as well as migraine illness tried your proposed “diet”, they would be in serious trouble. I recommend you educate yourself and get some credentials before you write something that causes someone a serious injury or death.
Dear Mr. Kress, I don’t know where you got your information about migraine illness or nutritional requirements, but I presume you made them up. Your statement regarding migraineurs causing their own headaches is not only insulting but also totally incorrect. Have you ever talked to a neurologist who specializes in headache disorders about migraine illness? What do you know about the different types of migraine or the different phases of the illness? If anyone who has diabetes as well as migraine illness tries your supposed “healthy” diet, they could very soon be in serious trouble. Instead of continuing to write such rubbish to advance your business, I suggest you get yourself some knowledge before your “recommendations” cause someone serious hurt.
Good Heavens…do you really know anything about migraine disease? Seriously, there are so many false statements in this article I would not know where to begin…I am a 30 year migraine suffer and based on those 30 years of living with migraine disease this article is mostly fiction….Sorry, just my personal life experience…
Dear Mr. Kress,
Before you publish an article on a subject which you know entirely nothing about, please do yourself and your readers a favor and educate yourself! Much of your Migraine MISinformation is antiquated or blatantly false. I don’t see any sources listed, so I do not know where your information came from. Please consult some reliable sources and correct your article or take it down. Thank you.
As a Chronic Daily Migraineur who is HIGHLY educated, I take offense that this article suggests that my migraines are MY FAULT, and if I just corrected things in my life, I’d be “cured”….I call baloney on that one!
So, did you actually RESEARCH migraines before writing this, or did you just pull hearsay out of your rear end and decide to roll with the stereotypes and myths you’ve heard your entire life?
Imagine me, someone not into yoga (but who knows enough about fitness to
take care of herself), writing an article as if I were an expert on both, yet using outdated opinions and thoughts to write an article on something I know little to nothing about! You wouldn’t like it. Do you know how many people I know in “excellent” health who have this disease and fight it daily? Migraine isn’t a tension headache, and it’s not brought on by what patients do to themselves.
Leave the migraine articles to the experts, and keep yourself in your fitness parameters.
I suggest more research and a more humble approach to a subject to which you know nothing. Maybe you should chat with some support groups wherein the members suffer from migraines, a legitimate, biological disease in which multiple genetic markers have been identified…It’s apparent you know next to nothing about migraine, and this article is a shame.
This is one of the worst articles written about migraine that I’ve read in…..ever.
You are blaming the patient for his condition. You are placing the accountability to NOT get a migraine on the patient. How ignorant. You even said that “most of the conditions that create a migraine are caused by our own actions”. Absolutely, scientifically, unequivocally false.
As an author, a self-proclaimed healthcare um…”professional”, you are miserably misinformed and judgmental. Shame on you.
Did ANY comments make it through moderation?
I suggest to the moderator/webmaster that this well-intended article be removed for lack of content accuracy. Unless this site is intended as a venue for creative writing or self-advertisement with unsubstantiated claims then it would be okay. There are too many problems to elaborate, but it starts with a befuddled understanding of the diagnosis, in which the terms “migraine” and “tension” headache are used as though they refer to the same condition. The claim that migraine can be avoided by a balanced lifestyle and nutrition has the ring of quasi truth that could be true for many people, perhaps those that this advertiser wants to bring to his sports nutrition business, but up to 2% of people with migraine have a chronic daily headache whose problems may require coordinated care of other professionals in other disciplines, such as physical therapy, occupational therapy, dentistry, medicine, and psychology. Sometimes those who suffer from a chronic daily headache also need testing to determine whether they have a serious medical/surgical condition. Lastly, but not least, a detox cleansing regimen that includes fasting for two to three days is more than likely to produce a migraine in anyone who would have occasion to seek treatment for their headache. In summary this content is fatally flawed from a factual point of view, and moreover, may produce greater harm than good for those unsuspecting few who would have the misfortune of viewing the advice as credible.
Mr. Kress,
If all it took were a “special cleansing ritual” to “cure” Migraine disease, don’t you think we’d be doing it?
Your “research” appears baseless and statements like “migraine sufferers often unknowingly bring this problem on themselves through their busy daily lifestyles” are absolutely appalling.
Stick with being a certified fitness trainer and yoga instructor. Clearly you are out of your league here.
And for goodness sake, take this misinformation down at once.
I applaud the many people who have written you regarding the inaccuracies of your article, as well as your cavalier approach to Migraines. What I find astounding is that you have not pulled, retracted, or corrected your article. This leaves me to the conclusion that you are among the many who write about Migraines, not because you wish to inform and help others, but because you too want to sell something. It is so disheartening to see how many people prey upon the desires of those with Migraines and chronic pain to get well that they will suggest a “miracle” cure that is totally unfounded in science and in empirical literature. Please consult a Migraine specialist before writing about a topic that you clearly don’t know enough about to write an informed article.
Wow! As so many before me have said I am appauled at the inaccuracy of the information that you have provided here. Migraines are a genetic, neurological disease. They are not tension headaches and while yes, certain aspects of ones life, poor diet, poor sleep habits, other poor life style choices may be triggers (contributing factors) and may in some occasions even worsen their migraines they certainly do not cause them. Genetic neurological disease!!!!
If you can actually explain to me how your detox is going to do anything for my migraines, or for anyone elses, with science backing you up I would love to hear, I really would. Oranges and their juice, melons and grapefruit – three of the things you recommend be consumed during your detox – are all known migraine triggers in my world. So if by some miricle I don’t end up having a migraine from being under-nurished I can assure you I would due to consuming the food items you recommend.
None of us are close minded and if a treatment has some legitimacy and could actually cure, or even reduce the frequency of our migraines we would be jumping at it. Unfortunately this is not one of those legitimate ‘treatments’ and I beg of you to correct the mis-information that you have included in this article before some less educated migraneur endures further suffering at your hand.
Any chance this author is going to come out of the shadows and face his accusers? Any chance he’ll respond to the above comments?