are there really foods that give you headaches? – breaking latest news

We are publishing a preview of an article in the new Corriere Salute. You can read the full text on the issue at newsstands for free on Thursday 16 June or in Pdf on the Digital Edition of the «Corriere della Sera».

Was it something I ate? Often those who suffer from recurring headaches tries to attribute the cause of the attacks to external factors, in the hope of being able to control them. Foods fit into this hypothesis.

But are there really foods that promote headaches or, on the contrary, can they prevent it? “There are classifications of foods allegedly harmful to migraine sufferers, but many of these are even protective for other patients – he replies Cherubino Di Lorenzo, neurologist of the Polo Pontino of the Sapienza University of Rome -: there is no rule and the dynamics are very subjective. This is the case of the chocolateOften referred to as a pejorative factor, there actually seem to be far more people benefiting from it. Coffee for many is a detonator of the attack, yet several migraine medications contain caffeine. Even milk derivatives in some induce the crisis because lactose or casein (if not digested well) can have an inflammatory effect on the intestine, but it does not always happen ».

In recent studies, attention has shifted to the mechanisms that bind headache sufferers to consumption of sweets: while before it was thought they were triggers of the disorder, now it is thought that they can be predictive. The search for sugars would be an extreme attempt by the brain to “heal yourself»: The food itself is ineffective, but when the headache arrives in the patient’s memory, the association between having eaten sweets (or carbohydrates) and having been sick remains.

You can continue reading the article in Corriere Salute on newsstands for free on Thursday 16 June or in Pdf in the Digital Edition of Corriere della Sera.