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Migraines and Chocolate

By Joy Healey

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 05Nov2008 Word count: 505 Viewed: 267 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

One of the first substances that springs to mind when you think of food allergies provoking migraines is chocolate. The correlation between this guilty pleasure and the excruciating pain of migraine headaches was made during a large study the results of which were published in Lancet(1).

However, chocolate is one of the few foods that has been the specific subject of double blind controlled studies to ascertain how much of a trigger it really is - unlike many other food products, which have only been part of larger studies involving a broad range of suspects.

These double blind, focused studies seem to leave some ambiguity in the subject. One done at the London Hospital in 1974 seemed to conclude that while chocolate could be a trigger, it wasn't a significant one(2). This was a full five years before the Lancet study, which in turn actually placed chocolate near the head of the list among other triggers thought to predominantly cause migraines.

Another study done in 1997 also used a double blind protocol and placebo to try and pinpoint chocolate as an aggressive migraine trigger - again with inconclusive results. The study, done at the University of Pittsburgh, Pain Evaluation and Treatment Institute, showed that no difference was seen between patients given chocolate and others given the carob placebo in either occurrence of migraines or severity(3).

Of course, one must take into account the overwhelming amount of anecdotal and testimonial evidence from hundreds of thousands of migraine sufferers who report chocolate as a trigger. Many of these claim that removing it from their diet caused instant cessation - whereas accidental or careless reintroduction caused just as immediate recurrence of symptoms.

There is one as of yet formally unpublished study, on which correspondence exists - a trial on 20 patients who believed migraine to be a trigger were challenged with either chocolate or a placebo. The 8 receiving the placebo had no incidence of migraine - five out of the 12 who received chocolate did have a typical migraine attack. Due to the small size of the test group, the results are not completely conclusive(4).

But as so often with food intolerances, what one person can eat with impunity can cause an unpleasant or even dangerous reaction in another. Consider the simple peanut - a killer for some, a harmless snack for another.

Obviously scientific studies are interesting and essential, but however much we crave it, chocolate is something we can live without. The simple way to discover if it's a trigger food for you is simply to eliminate it from your diet for a few weeks. If your migraines are bad enough, it's a simple sacrifice to make.

(1) Grant ECG; Food, Allergies and Migraine; Lancet, May 5 1979;966-969

(2) A. M. Moffett, M. Swash, and D. F. Scott - Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 1974 April

(3) Marcus DA, Scharff L, Turk D, Gourley LM - Cephalalgia 1997 Dec; 17(8):855-62

(4) CM Gibb, V Glover, M Sandler, Bernhard Baron Memorial Research Laboratories

Research by Grace-Alexander

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