Foods and migraines have a deep connection, something Dr. Fred Cohen knows personally about. When he sees patients suffering from headaches, he knows all too well what they’re going through.
Cohen says he’s had severe headaches once a week for as long as he can remember — at least since kindergarten.
“That was just my life just and what I thought was just a normal thing. Once a week, I’ve got to end my day early, go home and sleep,” Cohen, a headache specialist and assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, tells TODAY.com.
“The pain was severe … a 10 out of 10 throbbing pain in your head.”
It wasn’t until he was in his 20s and in medical school that he understood his episodes were migraines — recurring headaches that often come with severe pulsating pain on one side of the head, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
His own journey to find relief inspired Cohen to become a headache specialist. He says migraines are the “bread and butter” of what he does — almost 30 million Americans suffer from migraines, most of them women, the Office on Women’s Health notes. Migraines are the No. 1 cause of disability among young women, studies have found.
Cohen also sees patients with other types of headaches — cluster, tension, and those that involve the face and the neck. A recent patient complained of a primary sexual headache, “which is at climax, they feel like their head is about to explode — a severe sudden pain,” Cohen says.
Can foods trigger migraines and headaches?
Yes, foods and drinks are often triggers for migraines because the condition involves neuroinflammation, and what people eat can promote an inflammatory state, he adds.
Other factors that can trigger headaches and migraines include hunger, stress, changes in sleep and airline travel, he notes.
Cohen’s own dietary trigger is alcohol, so he avoids it because he knows a drink would result in what he calls…
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