An Anti-Migraine Diet

What you eat-and don't eat-can help stave off debilitating headaches

- Jen Babakhan

CHRISTY NIELSON, 49, remembers getting her first migraine when she was in third grade. She curled up in the back of the school bus with excruciating pain, not able to find the words to tell her parents what it felt like when she got home. When she hit puberty, the migraines got worse. By her early 20s, she assumed that severe headaches were an unavoidable part of her life. It wasn't until years later that she finally found a cure ... in her kitchen.

Migraine is a neurological disease that has a number of symptoms, including moderate-to-severe throbbing head pain that can stick around for anywhere from four hours to several days. According to the American Migraine Foundation, nearly 40 million people in the United States experience these headaches. While migraines can occur partly because of genetic factors, attacks may happen seemingly at random, set off by a trigger in the environment. “Everyone's brain works slightly differently, but we know in general triggers can cause a hyperexcitability to the cortex of the brain,” says Danielle Wilhour, MD, an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

One common trigger is food, and some common dietary triggers include alcohol, salt, sugar, chocolate, and caffeine. But there are many others, and scientists continue to identify more. Last year, for instance, a Brazilian study looked at some common fruits and vegetables to see their impact on headaches. They found that watermelons were the most common migraine trigger among the produce they studied, bringing on a headache within minutes in about 30 percent of the study participants.