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CHRONIC MIGRAINES
Thought About Switching to an Anti-Inflammatory Diet?
I did. 10 years on, it is still life-changing.
Those who read me know I struggle with migraine. This month I hit the tenth anniversary of the one thing I did that made the most difference in my life.
Ten years ago, I changed my diet, which at the time was vegetarian with occasional visits to pescatarian land (I love sushi!), to an anti-inflammatory diet.
In January of 2012, I was restless. I'd been through the mill with different prophylactic meds. After years of trial and error, I had settled on nortriptyline, the one med that had made a noticeable difference with minimal side effects.
Sadly my limited improvement seemed to have run its course. I'd hit a plateau, and for almost six months, I'd felt the same. It was better, but it wasn't enough. I wanted more.
My resources were limited, I didn't have health insurance, so although I was technically on the list for Botox, financially, I couldn't pull it off. I was rummaging around for something when my boss, a naturopath, handed me a book.
The Anti-Inflammation Diet and Recipe Book, by Jessica K. Black, ND.
It was a Hail Mary. We'd been here before when she was my doctor and had twice gone through elimination diets to see if I had any food triggers. But the book was free, and at least I'd be doing something.
So, I took it home, read the text portion, and thumbed through the recipes. Bits of it came up as woo-woo, but I've always felt that way about naturopathy, but like I said, I just wanted to feel like I was doing something.
Step one — Clean out the cupboards.
The basics of the anti-inflammatory diet are to get rid of everything that is known or suspected of causing inflammation. This includes the usual suspects — wheat, peanuts, dairy, sugar, caffeine, and shellfish. And the less well known— tomatoes, potatoes, tofu, citrus, and corn.
In my zealous hope, I threw out or gave away everything in my cupboards that didn't fit the new diet. This wasn't hard; I was so sick I was living on scrambled eggs and Boca burgers, with the…
