How do stress and diet affect migraines?
Certainly foods are much talked about as triggers, but they probably play a relatively small role overall. It’s been quite hard from a scientific standpoint to actually validate that foods serve as triggers. Nevertheless, if individuals clearly recognize something in their diet that’s likely to trigger a headache, of course we would suggest that they try to avoid that, just as we would say to avoid other triggers. Stress is the most common trigger for migraine attacks that is identified by individuals with migraine. I think one can summarize triggers in migraines by simply saying that migraine loves change. So changing the wake-sleep cycle, missing meals, being exposed to stress, even following stress — which has sometimes been called a let-down headache — all of these things may perturb the inner steady state in a person who is prone to have migraines. A particular perturbation might mean a lot for one individual and not much for another, but there are patterns.
