A Clinical Approach to Addressing Diet with Migraine Patients

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11910- 017- 0721- 6

Abstract-Summary Focus on lifestyle changes, especially diet, is often discussed during clinical visits in the care of migraine patients.

When advising patients on dietary changes to improve migraine, it is important to acknowledge the limits in evidence and the larger role that diet may play in life- style changes.

2.4 Lifestyle

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This review will focus on current evidence on the effect of diet and migraine and

use a case to illustrate how to approach diet changes in a patient with migraine.

Introduction This article will review the current literature about what types of evidence are avail- able to support dietary interventions for migraine, including what level of effect can be reasonably expected from these interventions; the burden of various diets on patients; and, when migraine continues despite dietary intervention, can we know if it is from a failure to comply with diet, or is the patient merely a non-responder?

Elimination diets are based upon the premise that certain foods (or food compo- nents) are capable of triggering a migraine event in susceptible individuals, in accordance with the theory of Lance and Goadsby [597].

She continued to keep her headache calendar during this time and noticed a dras- tic improvement in migraines and general well-being that began within 1–2 weeks of starting the diet.

In the event that a patient experiences a triggering effect by some component of these food groups, the paleo style of eating would appear clinically to reduce migraine symptoms.

Conclusion There is no strong evidence to support any particular migraine diet.

Priority should be given to monitor or challenge the most common triggers, but evidence does not support elimination diets to identify triggers for migraine prevention.

When examining our young patient who improved on her changed diet, the improvement in her migraine frequency may have been caused by the improved consistency in her lifestyle.

By starting the diet, the patient was forced to bring more meals from home and

eat on a regular basis.

Until a particular diet style provides strong evidence in the prevention of migraine, focus should be placed on attainment of a consistent, healthy lifestyle (i.e., regular meals, regular sleep, regular exercise, stress reduction, and mainte- nance of a healthy weight), in addition to the potential of pharmacological manage- ment of migraines.

Acknowledgement A machine generated summary based on the work of Slavin, Margaret; Ailani, Jessica2017 in Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports.

Level of physical activity, well-being, stress and self-rated health in persons with migraine and co-existing tension-type headache and neck pain