Migraine Headaches

I've suffered from migraines since I was 11 years old, so I have always thought that by now, I'd have preventing them down to a science. I've spent years avoiding eating anything with MSG -- that means I've skipped out on the tempting spinach dips and flavored chips at parties, and I scan the labels of almost everything I buy at the grocery store. As many migraine sufferers know, MSG isn't the only cause of migraines. I've been to doctors, taken vitamins and carry Excedrin with me at all times, but the truth is no matter how much you try to avoid it, you're going to get a migraine one of these days.
This week, I found myself leaving work early with a forehead-throbbing, nauseated-causing migraine. I couldn't think of anything I had done to prompt my migraine. After all, I was in too much pain to care, anyway. My boyfriend, however, didn't want to give up so easily. He was determined to figure out the cause. He thought back to every food we had eaten over the past few days.

"Was it the soy sauce we had with the sushi?" he asked me.

No, I didn't use the soy sauce.

"What about the beef jerky?"

Even though the beef jerky did contain my friend MSG, I only had two itsy-bitsy pieces, so I knew it wasn't the beef jerky.

"What about the soda from last night?"

The soda? Impossible. But, lo and behold, boyfriend brought can of soda to my attention, and at the very end of the list of ingredients was a mysterious item marked by two asterisks. The can read: PHENYLKETONURICS: Contains PHENYLALANINE.

We Googled the ingredient, and sure enough, for people prone to migraines, phenylalanine is known to tighten blood vessels and slow down blood flow, causing -- you guessed it -- a migraine!

Not only did I add another item to my "Foods to Never Eat Again" list, I spent the day home from work, in bed. I popped some Excedrin, lay down, applied some pain-relieving muscle cream (like BENGAY) and an ice pack to my forehead and drifted off to sleep. Some people may find the muscle cream part strange, but it numbs the pain, and when it comes to migraines that just won't go away, I'm all about numbing the pain. If the ice pack isn't working for me, I resort to an herbal bean bag that I heat up in the microwave for two minutes and then apply it where it hurts.

So, I may not look (or smell) like the most attractive person when I have a migraine (perhaps that's why my boyfriend was so insistent on finding it's cause?), but I'll resort to whatever I have to in order to wake up cured.

Do you have your own personal remedy/alternative medicine for migraines? Help me (and the rest of us migraine-sufferers) out by sharing with us in a comment below.

--Jenn Kepler, jr. copy editor
ediets diet and fitness blog