Headaches can be a symptom of a wide variety of things. You previously wrote an article about having been anemic, and starting to take iron supplements. This seems like the place to start. Your blood iron could still be weird; the anemia could be a symptom of something else, which also causes headaches; and having had one serious deficiency, it is much more likely that you have another.
The following additional data would be useful. (The symptom-related questions are mostly things that showed up researching iron deficiency-related things on wikipedia.)
A transcription or photo of the nutrition facts panels of every dietary supplement you take, and an estimate (based on how often you restock) of how often you take it. Also mention any supplements which you have tried taking which didn’t work.
Your entry on May 20 mentions feeling “tremory”. Have you had that feeling multiple times? Could you describe it in more detail?
Do you get paresthesia (“pins and needles” feeling) in your extremities? Numbness? If so, where and how often?
What is your blood pressure?
Have you had a HbA1c or fasting glucose test in the past two years?
Have you noticed any of the following (and if so, how often): palpitations; sore throat; bloodshot eyes; mouth ulcers; dry skin; itching after exposure to warm water?
One other thing I notice about the log is that it’s very high-carb and low-fat. It’s worth trying a switch to a radically-different (eg low carb) diet; that changes many things at once, some of which might be relevant.
I take an iron pill and a vitamin D pill every day except when I forget. I had blood tests to check up on my iron a few months ago; they were fine.
The tremors turned out to be a side effect of an antibiotic. It went away when I adjusted the dose.
My limbs fall asleep when I spend too long in a weird position but not at arbitrary times. I don’t get numbness.
I don’t remember my exact blood pressure but it’s been taken many times in the last year and never alarmed anyone.
I don’t think I’ve had a glucose test.
Palpitations yes; sore throat only occasionally; bloodshot eyes not really; mouth ulcers maybe depends what you mean but they’re not a big deal; dry skin not especially; itching after exposure to warm water not really.
I would be more open to switching to a low carb diet if anyone could name something that crunches the way toast does.
I take an iron pill and a vitamin D pill every day except when I forget. I had blood tests to check up on my iron a few months ago; they were fine.
So no standard multivitamin? Have you at least tried taking one for a week and seeing if it makes a difference?
I don’t think I’ve had a glucose test.
You can buy HbA1c test kits over the counter for ~$30 at most pharmacies. (HbA1c is a 30-ish-day average of your blood sugar concentration. It detects diabetes (high) and hypoglycemia (low).)
I would be more open to switching to a low carb diet if anyone could name something that crunches the way toast does.
Surely you can tolerate any diet, no matter how untasty, for long enough (2 weeks) to find out whether it gets rid of your headaches.
One more hypothesis: celiac disease (aka gluten intolerance). This study says that conditional on being in a high-risk group that you’re in (because of the iron-deficiency anemia, which celiac disease causes), its prevalence is 9.6%. Update up for having other symptoms in need of explanation, down for not having unexplained weight loss. It that were it, then avoiding gluten for awhile would get rid of the headaches and other bad things.
In addition to a regular multivitamin, I also recommend a large-dose B-complex pill, since I suspect you may have a malabsorption-related deficiency which a regular multivitamin would not fully solve, and those have no significant downsides.
How do you get blood out of yourself with those tests? I’m not sure if I could do that.
You use a lancet, which is a thin spring-loaded needle that creates a small puncture in the skin of a finger, squeeze the skin around it to force blood out into a small droplet, then press that against a surface that absorbs it through surface tension. Extensive research effort has been put into making lancet devices that are as painless as possible, since all diabetics use them several times per day.
Should I start the B vitamin and the multivitamin at the same time?
Are the lancets like the ones that the Red Cross use to check iron levels etc? Those I could probably do as long as they don’t require me to have steady hands, which I lack.
The timing doesn’t matter; start the B- and generic-multi vitamins whenever you get access to them.
Are the lancets like the ones that the Red Cross use to check iron levels etc?
It’s the same idea. There are many minor variations, and I don’t know which variation you saw or which one you’ll get, but they generally don’t differ in any important respects.
I usually eat like four slices of ciabatta a day. But after I posted that comment I realized that I would also be quite put out if I had to restrict my sugar intake. (My mental organization system doesn’t lump sugar and starch into a reference class or I’d have said that in that comment.) I also really like rice at Indian restaurants, and I’m not sure how I’d go about enjoying curry without either that or naan...
That isn’t in your food log. The fact that you really like a food doesn’t mean you can rule it out as a poison.
I realized that I would also be quite put out if I had to restrict my sugar intake.
You’d go into withdrawal, but the withdrawal symptoms and cravings would go away within two weeks. The body uses sugar first for energy, then fat; if you’re eating lots of sugar, it needs to transition to metabolizing fat (ketosis), and it’s short on energy in the interim, which is a little unpleasant. But it’s better on the other side.
Also, rice is fairly benign. In my mind, the only issue with white rice is that it crowds out more useful sources of calories, and just provides empty carbohydrates.
You can buy an HbA1c test for around 9 dollars from Walmart. I strongly suggest avoiding the instant read tests, as they have accuracy/precision issues. Get the one that requires you to mail in the blood spot for the test results.
Looking over your diet you seem to eat very little, for which I have a bit of jealousy—if I tried to eat like that my headaches would be from transitioning in and out of ketosis (I get mild headaches when I don’t eat enough, and on fasting days they are most annoying) and you only eat meat (usually in the form of seafood) every other day or once every three or four days.
As I don’t know you well, I wonder if this is circumstance (you’re in depressed economic circumstances), or if this is a choice? I remember (but could be wrong) that you’re somewhere out there on the Autism Spectrum, and many folks with ASD have food “issues” of one kind or another.
Either way, the concept of a low carb diet can either be targeting a specific and low amount of carbs a day, or it can be looking at the total energy balance consumed—to pull an example out of the air 20% carbs, 40% protein, 40% fats. Looking at what you’ve posted, and without actually doing the math I think that you’re probably more around 10-20 percent protein, 60-70 percent sugars and carbs (you eat a good bit of fruit, but that’s mostly fructose and glucose, not the longer chain starches) and the balance protein. I don’t think this is a very healthy balance, but others with as much or more knowledge disagree. Whatever.
Either way it doesn’t mean you can’t eat crunchy stuff like pretzels or potato chips, it just means when you do you have to cut something else, or increase other things (diet, fats, proteins) to compensate. I guess if you eat a horrendously strict low carb diet those things are out, but this is more about goals than religion, no?
Given your current diet it may be enough to simply add calories and if you then start to see unhappy body-shape consequences modulate overall diet and exercise to adjust. As an example eat a 1⁄2 pound of chicken breast, a 8 ounce pork or beef steak, salmon and some other fish in comparable quantities every day. This will up your protein, and if you can find good pastured/grazed cattle and pork will increase your omega-3 intake and other essential fatty acids.
My two biggest downfalls where low-carb and gluten free is concerned is Pizza and Pretzels. Oh, and ice cream. The ice cream here in AUS is still made with real sugar and real cream. Even the stuff in the little stop-and-robs. Oh Man.
Pizza we tried to work around by accepting that it’s not going to be “low carb” in that sense and restricting it to once a week. Gluten free we tried to solve by finding a gluten free pizza dough recipe.
That didn’t go so well, so we’re back to flour based pizza dough. Pretzels I can usually avoid, but they’re in the junk food machines at work (the facility I work in is about 20 miles from the nearest other source of food in a secure building with armed guard etc. etc., so you pretty much either bring your own food or eat in the cafeteria) so I occasionally succumb to temptation. So what—the point isn’t to be a purist, the point is to achieve specific goals, and with my waist the smallest it’s been since 2000, I’m ok with falling off the wagon every so often.
The point is that if you can modify your diet enough to reduce the frequency and severity of headaches, it’s an overall win right?
So there are two things wrong with wheat based grains. One is the gluten, which can cause Celiac or celiac-like responses, and the other is phytic acid. Now, there’s a lot of BS on the net about foods and health, so I’m always skeptical about stuff like this but it seems that phytic acid reduces mineral (including iron) and vitamin absorption in the gut. There are two ways to get rid of phytic acid—soaking/fermenting, and avoidance. Breads and dough based foods made with long-rise yeasts will have less phytic acid than short rise yeasts. Beans soaked for 12-24 hours will have lower phytic acid than those soaked for shorter periods of times etc. etc.
Your diet doesn’t appear to be horribly heavy in wheat based stuff, but you were diagnosed with iron deficiencies, so this plus some steak/beef if your dietary preferences allow it may help.
To more narrowing focus on the crunch part, once you address your overall energy budget and eliminate gluten from it, there are some things you can do to get the crunchy back in.
1) Rice based bread. Carb heavy, but gluten free. The stuff I got at Trader Joes was a rather dense bread and bit on the moist side for good toasting, but you might have some luck with it.
2) You’re across the harbor from S.F.. Sourdough bread HAS to be done with a long-fermentation process (long enough to reduce the phytic acid content significantly) SF is the sourdough bread capital of the world.
3) Rice cakes. Yeah, the crunch isn’t as good as crackers or toast, but it’s there.
4) Sourdough crackers. Crackers tend to have a bit less overall sugar/carbs in them than bread, and sourdough crackers with cream cheese and smoked salmon is a marvelous breakfast.
Oh, that reminds me. One way of altering your energy/protein balance is to simply drink a protein drink/shake every morning and evening. I have been getting 5 pound bags of this http://www.trueprotein.com/Product_Details.aspx?cid=46&pid=536 and mixing 2 scoops with 16oz of water for breakfast every morning. The plain unsweetened stuff is like weak milk, which I don’t care for, but can swallow. The unsweetened chocolate is much more palatable. I’d guess that with 2 scoops a day 2 pounds would last me a month. I bought 10 pounds last order, but just to see if you can stomach it 1 pound ought to get you along the way. Just to add—no financial interest on my part, yadda yadda.
One other thing to look for—and this may have come up before or later in the thread. Some folks are particularly sensitive to different preservatives, to caffeine or other stimulants etc.. Your food diary, while much more accurate than I could generate over that same time, lacks the sort of minute specificity that would let a doctor or a someone with far more knowledge than I pick out the one or two chemicals that are fucking with you.
I routinely get headaches of various kinds, some due to “whiplash” when I was 19, some due to swelling of the sinuses (some due to infections, some not) and finally I wake up most days with a mild headache (sort of like you describe where moving the head increases the pain, but lying there doesn’t make it go away). Usually it will subside if I get up and get through the initial pain, but some days that’s damn hard to do.
I wouldn’t claim to eat very little. As I said, this diary doesn’t include portion size—in particular, the word “candy” might mean several handsful over the course of a day, “ice cream” might be just a little or two bowls, etc. etc.
I’m just looking at what you’re reporting and seeing a trend of someone who eats worse than I ever did, except for a very short time when I was in school and not working and would eat a plate of rice and soy sauce for lunch, with maybe a bagel and cream cheese if i had extra money, and then dinner would be half a pound of baloney and some french bread. Breakfast was caffeine.
And yeah, I had a LOT more headaches back then, and would just not bother to go to class on some days. meaning not leaving the house. When my finances got better...no, when my fiancee moved in and started insisting on “real” food (what, mac-n-cheese and hotdogs is real food!) things got a bit better.
I realize there’s individual differences, but try to track not only what you’re eating, but how many calories you’re getting. If it’s less than 1500 a day (which is fairly low, but you live in a moderate climate and don’t get much exercise) I’d suggest adding aiming for 1800-2000 calories of “quality” food (vegetables, fish or chicken, more eggs (especially pastured eggs if you can afford them). Also nuts are a good source of proteins, fats and longer lasting starches.
Also, if you’re on hormone therapy for either cycle stabilization or pregnancy prevention...No, it started way earlier than that, so that’s not the cause. OTOH there was a study some 20 years or so ago linking use of birth control hormones with stroke, so if you’re getting worse headaches consult your doctor to see if those risks are still relevant (this shouldn’t have to be an office visit, merely a call to the clinic should do).
Pescetarian. Not going to eat chicken. I can eat more salmon, tuna, and trout, though. I already eat what seems like a ridiculous amount of eggs; I’ve been on this egg kick. Didn’t use to eat them much.
I actually took magnesium supplements during part of the logged period (I was trying to fix my annoyingly high levels of fasciculation). They didn’t have any effect on anything.
Sorry, the definition of Pescetarian I read said “fish but no meat”. Since fowl is neither fish, nor “meat” in some circles, and you ate eggs, I thought the full grown chicken/turkey was ok.
How long did you take the magnesium? Week, two weeks? Sometimes this stuff takes days or weeks to ‘load up’. My wife started taking B for some memory issues (she was tested low in B something or other) and it took a couple weeks for me to notice an improvement. She never noticed it, but that’s because she was the one forgetting.
The headaches are a lifelong problem, and I didn’t become a pescetarian until I was 17. So I’m pretty sure they’re not caused by meat deficiency. Putting my vegetarianism on a hiatus would be injurious to the long-term commitment thereto.
(note: somewhat orthagonal to the discussion of diet v.s. headaches)
I do understand commitment—I have been married over 15 years, and the last 4 have been not worth the effort, but I’m not really suffering because of it (and there’s a little kid involved, which is a separate commitment).
But you’re basically saying that if my wife starts punching me in the mouth every day, then I should stay with her just because I made a long term commitment. As the kids today say “that’s fuxord”
Almost every human being has distinct genes, and once we hit the world and those genes start to express themselves we get wildly divergent results.
if I could prove to you that a cheese burger a day and ONLY a cheese burger (or some sort of steak) would greatly reduce the severity and frequency of your headaches, would you STILL insist on a diet deficient in dead cow flesh? (leave aside that you ate cheese burgers as a kid and it didn’t help).
All Jimrandomh is suggesting is that you may want to be willing to test whether some combination of foods will help. If, in the end it doesn’t, well ok. If, OTOH your find that my cheese burger fixes you this doesn’t mean that you can’t go back to the diet you’ve committed to, but at least then you know (sort of) why you have the problem and if you need to modulate it (for example you know a tough week is coming up) you can take steps.
(that said, while i think that well raised pork and beef are healthy in appropriate quantities, you can have a healthy diet without them and I would be really surprised to find out that they helped your problem)
Oh, and again to the crispy thing: I seem to remember my mom making fried zuchini at some point. I couldn’t stand it.
But you’re basically saying that if my wife starts punching me in the mouth every day, then I should stay with her just because I made a long term commitment.
No, I’m saying that if a masked person breaks into your house and punches you in the face and runs away, and it could be any of a couple dozen people only one of whom is your wife, divorcing her probably isn’t the first step.
Headaches can be a symptom of a wide variety of things. You previously wrote an article about having been anemic, and starting to take iron supplements. This seems like the place to start. Your blood iron could still be weird; the anemia could be a symptom of something else, which also causes headaches; and having had one serious deficiency, it is much more likely that you have another.
The following additional data would be useful. (The symptom-related questions are mostly things that showed up researching iron deficiency-related things on wikipedia.)
A transcription or photo of the nutrition facts panels of every dietary supplement you take, and an estimate (based on how often you restock) of how often you take it. Also mention any supplements which you have tried taking which didn’t work.
Your entry on May 20 mentions feeling “tremory”. Have you had that feeling multiple times? Could you describe it in more detail?
Do you get paresthesia (“pins and needles” feeling) in your extremities? Numbness? If so, where and how often?
What is your blood pressure?
Have you had a HbA1c or fasting glucose test in the past two years?
Have you noticed any of the following (and if so, how often): palpitations; sore throat; bloodshot eyes; mouth ulcers; dry skin; itching after exposure to warm water?
One other thing I notice about the log is that it’s very high-carb and low-fat. It’s worth trying a switch to a radically-different (eg low carb) diet; that changes many things at once, some of which might be relevant.
I take an iron pill and a vitamin D pill every day except when I forget. I had blood tests to check up on my iron a few months ago; they were fine.
The tremors turned out to be a side effect of an antibiotic. It went away when I adjusted the dose.
My limbs fall asleep when I spend too long in a weird position but not at arbitrary times. I don’t get numbness.
I don’t remember my exact blood pressure but it’s been taken many times in the last year and never alarmed anyone.
I don’t think I’ve had a glucose test.
Palpitations yes; sore throat only occasionally; bloodshot eyes not really; mouth ulcers maybe depends what you mean but they’re not a big deal; dry skin not especially; itching after exposure to warm water not really.
I would be more open to switching to a low carb diet if anyone could name something that crunches the way toast does.
So no standard multivitamin? Have you at least tried taking one for a week and seeing if it makes a difference?
You can buy HbA1c test kits over the counter for ~$30 at most pharmacies. (HbA1c is a 30-ish-day average of your blood sugar concentration. It detects diabetes (high) and hypoglycemia (low).)
Surely you can tolerate any diet, no matter how untasty, for long enough (2 weeks) to find out whether it gets rid of your headaches.
One more hypothesis: celiac disease (aka gluten intolerance). This study says that conditional on being in a high-risk group that you’re in (because of the iron-deficiency anemia, which celiac disease causes), its prevalence is 9.6%. Update up for having other symptoms in need of explanation, down for not having unexplained weight loss. It that were it, then avoiding gluten for awhile would get rid of the headaches and other bad things.
I will obtain a multivitamin and try it.
How do you get blood out of yourself with those tests? I’m not sure if I could do that.
Be less sure of this.
In addition to a regular multivitamin, I also recommend a large-dose B-complex pill, since I suspect you may have a malabsorption-related deficiency which a regular multivitamin would not fully solve, and those have no significant downsides.
You use a lancet, which is a thin spring-loaded needle that creates a small puncture in the skin of a finger, squeeze the skin around it to force blood out into a small droplet, then press that against a surface that absorbs it through surface tension. Extensive research effort has been put into making lancet devices that are as painless as possible, since all diabetics use them several times per day.
Should I start the B vitamin and the multivitamin at the same time?
Are the lancets like the ones that the Red Cross use to check iron levels etc? Those I could probably do as long as they don’t require me to have steady hands, which I lack.
The timing doesn’t matter; start the B- and generic-multi vitamins whenever you get access to them.
It’s the same idea. There are many minor variations, and I don’t know which variation you saw or which one you’ll get, but they generally don’t differ in any important respects.
Low carb isn’t the same thing as no carb. How much toast per day do you need to be satisfied?
I usually eat like four slices of ciabatta a day. But after I posted that comment I realized that I would also be quite put out if I had to restrict my sugar intake. (My mental organization system doesn’t lump sugar and starch into a reference class or I’d have said that in that comment.) I also really like rice at Indian restaurants, and I’m not sure how I’d go about enjoying curry without either that or naan...
That isn’t in your food log. The fact that you really like a food doesn’t mean you can rule it out as a poison.
You’d go into withdrawal, but the withdrawal symptoms and cravings would go away within two weeks. The body uses sugar first for energy, then fat; if you’re eating lots of sugar, it needs to transition to metabolizing fat (ketosis), and it’s short on energy in the interim, which is a little unpleasant. But it’s better on the other side.
Yes it is. “Toast”. Or “eggs on toast”, “sandwich”, etc.
Also, rice is fairly benign. In my mind, the only issue with white rice is that it crowds out more useful sources of calories, and just provides empty carbohydrates.
You can buy an HbA1c test for around 9 dollars from Walmart. I strongly suggest avoiding the instant read tests, as they have accuracy/precision issues. Get the one that requires you to mail in the blood spot for the test results.
Low carb is a relative thing.
Looking over your diet you seem to eat very little, for which I have a bit of jealousy—if I tried to eat like that my headaches would be from transitioning in and out of ketosis (I get mild headaches when I don’t eat enough, and on fasting days they are most annoying) and you only eat meat (usually in the form of seafood) every other day or once every three or four days.
As I don’t know you well, I wonder if this is circumstance (you’re in depressed economic circumstances), or if this is a choice? I remember (but could be wrong) that you’re somewhere out there on the Autism Spectrum, and many folks with ASD have food “issues” of one kind or another.
Either way, the concept of a low carb diet can either be targeting a specific and low amount of carbs a day, or it can be looking at the total energy balance consumed—to pull an example out of the air 20% carbs, 40% protein, 40% fats. Looking at what you’ve posted, and without actually doing the math I think that you’re probably more around 10-20 percent protein, 60-70 percent sugars and carbs (you eat a good bit of fruit, but that’s mostly fructose and glucose, not the longer chain starches) and the balance protein. I don’t think this is a very healthy balance, but others with as much or more knowledge disagree. Whatever.
Either way it doesn’t mean you can’t eat crunchy stuff like pretzels or potato chips, it just means when you do you have to cut something else, or increase other things (diet, fats, proteins) to compensate. I guess if you eat a horrendously strict low carb diet those things are out, but this is more about goals than religion, no?
Given your current diet it may be enough to simply add calories and if you then start to see unhappy body-shape consequences modulate overall diet and exercise to adjust. As an example eat a 1⁄2 pound of chicken breast, a 8 ounce pork or beef steak, salmon and some other fish in comparable quantities every day. This will up your protein, and if you can find good pastured/grazed cattle and pork will increase your omega-3 intake and other essential fatty acids.
My two biggest downfalls where low-carb and gluten free is concerned is Pizza and Pretzels. Oh, and ice cream. The ice cream here in AUS is still made with real sugar and real cream. Even the stuff in the little stop-and-robs. Oh Man.
Pizza we tried to work around by accepting that it’s not going to be “low carb” in that sense and restricting it to once a week. Gluten free we tried to solve by finding a gluten free pizza dough recipe.
That didn’t go so well, so we’re back to flour based pizza dough. Pretzels I can usually avoid, but they’re in the junk food machines at work (the facility I work in is about 20 miles from the nearest other source of food in a secure building with armed guard etc. etc., so you pretty much either bring your own food or eat in the cafeteria) so I occasionally succumb to temptation. So what—the point isn’t to be a purist, the point is to achieve specific goals, and with my waist the smallest it’s been since 2000, I’m ok with falling off the wagon every so often.
The point is that if you can modify your diet enough to reduce the frequency and severity of headaches, it’s an overall win right?
So there are two things wrong with wheat based grains. One is the gluten, which can cause Celiac or celiac-like responses, and the other is phytic acid. Now, there’s a lot of BS on the net about foods and health, so I’m always skeptical about stuff like this but it seems that phytic acid reduces mineral (including iron) and vitamin absorption in the gut. There are two ways to get rid of phytic acid—soaking/fermenting, and avoidance. Breads and dough based foods made with long-rise yeasts will have less phytic acid than short rise yeasts. Beans soaked for 12-24 hours will have lower phytic acid than those soaked for shorter periods of times etc. etc.
Your diet doesn’t appear to be horribly heavy in wheat based stuff, but you were diagnosed with iron deficiencies, so this plus some steak/beef if your dietary preferences allow it may help.
To more narrowing focus on the crunch part, once you address your overall energy budget and eliminate gluten from it, there are some things you can do to get the crunchy back in.
1) Rice based bread. Carb heavy, but gluten free. The stuff I got at Trader Joes was a rather dense bread and bit on the moist side for good toasting, but you might have some luck with it.
2) You’re across the harbor from S.F.. Sourdough bread HAS to be done with a long-fermentation process (long enough to reduce the phytic acid content significantly) SF is the sourdough bread capital of the world.
3) Rice cakes. Yeah, the crunch isn’t as good as crackers or toast, but it’s there.
4) Sourdough crackers. Crackers tend to have a bit less overall sugar/carbs in them than bread, and sourdough crackers with cream cheese and smoked salmon is a marvelous breakfast.
Oh, that reminds me. One way of altering your energy/protein balance is to simply drink a protein drink/shake every morning and evening. I have been getting 5 pound bags of this http://www.trueprotein.com/Product_Details.aspx?cid=46&pid=536 and mixing 2 scoops with 16oz of water for breakfast every morning. The plain unsweetened stuff is like weak milk, which I don’t care for, but can swallow. The unsweetened chocolate is much more palatable. I’d guess that with 2 scoops a day 2 pounds would last me a month. I bought 10 pounds last order, but just to see if you can stomach it 1 pound ought to get you along the way. Just to add—no financial interest on my part, yadda yadda.
One other thing to look for—and this may have come up before or later in the thread. Some folks are particularly sensitive to different preservatives, to caffeine or other stimulants etc.. Your food diary, while much more accurate than I could generate over that same time, lacks the sort of minute specificity that would let a doctor or a someone with far more knowledge than I pick out the one or two chemicals that are fucking with you.
I routinely get headaches of various kinds, some due to “whiplash” when I was 19, some due to swelling of the sinuses (some due to infections, some not) and finally I wake up most days with a mild headache (sort of like you describe where moving the head increases the pain, but lying there doesn’t make it go away). Usually it will subside if I get up and get through the initial pain, but some days that’s damn hard to do.
Good luck.
I wouldn’t claim to eat very little. As I said, this diary doesn’t include portion size—in particular, the word “candy” might mean several handsful over the course of a day, “ice cream” might be just a little or two bowls, etc. etc.
I’m a pescetarian.
So up your intake of fatty fish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oily_fish) and chicken (chicken is cheap) and (mother)try to get more fresh vegetables.(/mother).
I’m just looking at what you’re reporting and seeing a trend of someone who eats worse than I ever did, except for a very short time when I was in school and not working and would eat a plate of rice and soy sauce for lunch, with maybe a bagel and cream cheese if i had extra money, and then dinner would be half a pound of baloney and some french bread. Breakfast was caffeine.
And yeah, I had a LOT more headaches back then, and would just not bother to go to class on some days. meaning not leaving the house. When my finances got better...no, when my fiancee moved in and started insisting on “real” food (what, mac-n-cheese and hotdogs is real food!) things got a bit better.
I realize there’s individual differences, but try to track not only what you’re eating, but how many calories you’re getting. If it’s less than 1500 a day (which is fairly low, but you live in a moderate climate and don’t get much exercise) I’d suggest adding aiming for 1800-2000 calories of “quality” food (vegetables, fish or chicken, more eggs (especially pastured eggs if you can afford them). Also nuts are a good source of proteins, fats and longer lasting starches.
My wife’s doctor recommended magnesium supplementation for her headaches. Magnesium levels weren’t tested, but the doctor said it may help, and some “real” studies seem to agree (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9523054?dopt=Abstract).
Also, if you’re on hormone therapy for either cycle stabilization or pregnancy prevention...No, it started way earlier than that, so that’s not the cause. OTOH there was a study some 20 years or so ago linking use of birth control hormones with stroke, so if you’re getting worse headaches consult your doctor to see if those risks are still relevant (this shouldn’t have to be an office visit, merely a call to the clinic should do).
Pescetarian. Not going to eat chicken. I can eat more salmon, tuna, and trout, though. I already eat what seems like a ridiculous amount of eggs; I’ve been on this egg kick. Didn’t use to eat them much.
I actually took magnesium supplements during part of the logged period (I was trying to fix my annoyingly high levels of fasciculation). They didn’t have any effect on anything.
I am not on hormones for anything.
Sorry, the definition of Pescetarian I read said “fish but no meat”. Since fowl is neither fish, nor “meat” in some circles, and you ate eggs, I thought the full grown chicken/turkey was ok.
How long did you take the magnesium? Week, two weeks? Sometimes this stuff takes days or weeks to ‘load up’. My wife started taking B for some memory issues (she was tested low in B something or other) and it took a couple weeks for me to notice an improvement. She never noticed it, but that’s because she was the one forgetting.
I took the entire bottle; I think it was about a month.
Celery?
Too wet and fibrous.
Bacon on paper towelling (to soak away grease) in a microwave until it’s cooked is crunchy, but not quite the way toast is.
Also it’s bacon, so it’s probably sufficiently different from toast that texture is overwhelmed.
I’m a pescetarian.
You should probably drop that constraint until you find a diet you can be healthy on, then maybe add it back once you know what the constraints are.
The headaches are a lifelong problem, and I didn’t become a pescetarian until I was 17. So I’m pretty sure they’re not caused by meat deficiency. Putting my vegetarianism on a hiatus would be injurious to the long-term commitment thereto.
(note: somewhat orthagonal to the discussion of diet v.s. headaches)
I do understand commitment—I have been married over 15 years, and the last 4 have been not worth the effort, but I’m not really suffering because of it (and there’s a little kid involved, which is a separate commitment).
But you’re basically saying that if my wife starts punching me in the mouth every day, then I should stay with her just because I made a long term commitment. As the kids today say “that’s fuxord”
Almost every human being has distinct genes, and once we hit the world and those genes start to express themselves we get wildly divergent results.
if I could prove to you that a cheese burger a day and ONLY a cheese burger (or some sort of steak) would greatly reduce the severity and frequency of your headaches, would you STILL insist on a diet deficient in dead cow flesh? (leave aside that you ate cheese burgers as a kid and it didn’t help).
All Jimrandomh is suggesting is that you may want to be willing to test whether some combination of foods will help. If, in the end it doesn’t, well ok. If, OTOH your find that my cheese burger fixes you this doesn’t mean that you can’t go back to the diet you’ve committed to, but at least then you know (sort of) why you have the problem and if you need to modulate it (for example you know a tough week is coming up) you can take steps.
(that said, while i think that well raised pork and beef are healthy in appropriate quantities, you can have a healthy diet without them and I would be really surprised to find out that they helped your problem)
Oh, and again to the crispy thing: I seem to remember my mom making fried zuchini at some point. I couldn’t stand it.
No, I’m saying that if a masked person breaks into your house and punches you in the face and runs away, and it could be any of a couple dozen people only one of whom is your wife, divorcing her probably isn’t the first step.
Well then bacon is definitely sufficiently different from toast!