The Migraine Question

And other questions as well.

I've been thinking a lot about food over these past months. Granted, I think a lot about food all the time, since I *am* a food enthusiast and all, but still... been thinking about it in different terms lately. Part of it came from my newfound obsession with plastic packaging and ways in which I can reduce my consumption of it (though I'm nowhere near cutting it out, nowhere near at all), and part of it came from a renewed interest in the chemicals going into my body and how they affect my body and wellbeing, and part of it comes from being kinda poor but really liking to eat tasty food and subsequently coming up with good cheap tasty food I can eat. Mmm, tasty food I can eat.

I developed this philosophy a couple months back that I call The Choice Diet. It's actually a philosophy that I've lived by most of my adult life (when I've paid attention) and I only call it the Choice Diet because it is most easily related (for me) to food, though it relates to all aspects of my life. The simplest way to explain it is with the following example.

I go out to a restaurant with friends and I have a menu before me. This is my idea of heaven. All these things that I can choose from that I can eat and it'll be awesome because food is so good. I decide that there are two dishes that are really sticking out to me as top contenders, for slightly different reasons. One is the fettuccine alfredo with, well, whatever seafood or poultry or sausage. Doesn't matter. They're all good and my mouth is watering with the idea of them. This dish will be so tasty and it'll fill my belly and I'll probably clap when it arrives because I'll be so happy to indulge in its awesomeness. The other is a tofu curry with rice and vegetables. (My fantasy restaurant has both dishes). It will also taste awesome but will lack that exquisite bad-for-you-ness that makes the first dish particularly super-awesome.

You know what I'm talking about.

There's something about indulging in food that is bad for you that makes you feel good. The bad-for-you food can even be of a lesser quality than its good-for-you counterpart, but somehow it'll satisfy you more. It's something about the combination of fat and salt and sugar that just explodes through your synapses, releasing endorphins or serotonin or I dunno what... but after eating that fettuccine alfredo, all is right with the world. Tofu and vegetables will also taste very nice. It'll also make me happy, but I won't have that initial burst of enjoyment that comes with eating a super-awesome but very bad-for-you meal.

If that were the whole choice, eating well would be much more difficult. Every meal would be a choice between eating good and eating well. Every meal would be a choice between enjoyment and will power. My will power is all right, but let's face it. I'm lying. My will power is really not that great. I would eat the fettuccine alfredo at every meal. Except... that's not the whole choice.

What happens after I eat those meals will be largely different. After I eat Option A-- the super-tasty and very bad-for-you option-- is that my stomach will hurt. For hours. Hours. The whole rest of the night, probably. Even the next day I'll still feel kind of bloated and greasy. After I eat Option B-- the tasty and good-for-you option-- I'll be full until I stop feeling full, and then I'll eventually get hungry again. I'll experience no adverse effects. The meal'll probably last me the rest of the night, and even if it doesn't, I'll just grab a snack later. That whole night I'll feel just fine. The next day I'll feel just fine.

That's the choice. Option A-- feel great now, feel not-so-great later. Option B-- feel good now, feel good later. The question is, do I want to really really really enjoy this meal, OR, do I want to feel good the rest of the night?

Feel good now, or feel good later?

When do I want my gratification?

The answer isn't always the same, which is why the Choice Diet works for me. I don't care enough about looking like Angelina Jolie to exercise four hours a day or to always choose Option B. But I care enough about feeling well to go for walks, do the random sit-up, and choose Option B often enough that Option A doesn't weigh me down entirely. I don't care enough for getting wasted that I'll brave the subsequent hangover, though I'll often get tipsy, just not hangover-worthy tipsy. I don't care enough about guitar playing to practice enough to become a master. But I enjoy it enough to tinker around with it and be a truly mediocre player. I care enough about what I'm studying so that sometimes I'll go weeks without talking to people outside of my house and my department because I'm so consumed with what I'm learning. But sometimes, I'll choose Option B and veg the frig out, reading trash novels and not thinking.

The Choice Diet, to me, is the conscious consideration of What do I want, and What is it worth me doing to get it? The answer is not always the same. Therein lies the balance.

I first began to realize that I lived this way when I first became allergic to chocolate. Oh my, I love chocolate. Chocolate is the best. Chocolate contains a chemical called phenylethylamine that causes some people to get migraines. I became one of those people at age 25. I'm 26 now, so that was... four years ago. I experimented with chocolate for months because I wasn't about to take this new allergy lying down. I learned that chocolate is in nearly everything that I like, and nearly every time I eat it I get a migraine. I learned that I can eat very tiny bits with no effect. I learned that if I eat very tiny bits every day, by the end of the week, I will get a migraine. I learned that it's just easier to say I'm Allergic and not eat Any Chocolate Ever (except sometimes when I choose Option B-- tempt fate and willpower by eating tiny bits). The choices are Eat No Chocolate and Have No Chocolate-Induced Migraine, and, Super-Enjoy Me Some Chocolate and Potentially Suffer Great Pain For About A Day.

That's really not much of a choice. If you've ever had a migraine, you know that you would NEVER choose something that might cause one. I'll eat a tiny bit (less than a fingernailfull's worth) about once a year because I don't want to risk that cumulative effect that I discover way back when.

But, well, I still get migraines. I know they're stress related, lack-of-sleep related, hormone related, and stared-too-long-at-my-computer-screen related. When I get a migraine, I can usually point to multiple of these factors as the probable cause. The problem is that I'll also experience multiple of these factors without getting a migraine. Which means I can't predict them. Which annoys me.

I started thinking about migraine causes again what with all this newfound and renewed interest in What Is Going Into My Body. One guy told me that he stopped eating foods with hydrogenated vegetable oils in them and hasn't had a migraine in years. I researched hydrogenated vegetable oils, came into research regarding coconut oil, and subsequently added coconut oil to my diet for about four weeks, which settled some stomach problems I'd been having and had the surprising bonus effect of clearing up my skin, which had previously refused to stop being acne-covered-teenager skin.

I haven't cut out hydrogenated vegetable oils yet, so I don't know if that's a migraine factor for me. Seriously, that stuff is in all modern food. It would take a huge overhaul of my eating habits to get there, and I've learned that huge overhauls aren't sustainable with me. I need to make changes bit by bit if I want them to last. I'm moving in that direction anyway, what with my push to cut back on the amount of unknown chemicals I consciously let into my body. Maybe next year I'll be there. Or maybe I'll find that Choices take me to some other balance. We'll see.

Anyway, I decided I wanted to find out what it was in chocolate that gives me migraines, so that I could figure out if it was in all chocolate or if there did exist chocolate that I could safely eat. I learned HERE that phenylethylamine develops in the fermentation process that makes coca beans into chocolate, and it carries on in the cocoa butter. Defatted chocolate will not have phenylethylamine in it. I don't know where to get some of that, but well, other questions were raised.

That same link told me that red wines, aspartam, citric acid, and citrus concentrate contain the same chemical and that all are triggers for people who get that sort of migraine.

But...

I drink red wine.

Sometimes it gives me headaches, very rarely do I get a migraine later, but usually I have no ill effects. I don't consume aspartam because artificial sweeteners mess up my blood sugar and cause me to go into hypoglycemic fits that are also very uncomfortable, but that have nothing at all to do with migraines. Citric acid is in a lot of products, like jelly and artificially fruity flavored drinks. I don't eat a lot of that stuff, but I do eat it sometimes. I've never noticed it to cause me a migraine, but I'll pay attention in the future.

Red wine I drink often enough to know it's not so much of a trigger. Rarely ever a trigger. And usually when it is a trigger, I can point to a trifecta of stress and lack of sleep and hormones as an alternate explanation. I have suspected that certain red wines gave me headaches (not migraines), but I've never kept a chart or anything to remember which ones to avoid. The website says that different wines have different amounts of phenylethylamine. So... does that mean that I don't get phenylethylamine migraines? Or that red wine has less phenylethylamine than your average chocolate bar so that I would have to drink more than one glass to feel the effects? And what about aspartam? I experimented enough with it years back to learn of its effects on my blood sugar, but never noticed a headache corollary.

I don't quite know what to make of this information, and I haven't found any online source that tells you how much phenylethylamine is present in various things so that I could test if there is some critical amount which suddenly becomes unsafe for me. But if chocolate causes migraines, and red wine and aspartam don't, well... does chocolate really cause me migraines? Or, at the time of my previous experimentation, was I just so sleepy and stressed and hormonal that I was going to have lots of migraines anyway and they just happened to consistently coincide with my experimentation? I was still working for Sr. Angie back then, and we all remember how horrible that whole experience was.

So that comes back to Choice. Is the threat of a migraine sufficient to keep me from re-experimenting with chocolate eating? Chocolate eating would be awesome if it wasn't connected with extreme pain. But man, extreme pain is... painful.

So far, I'm keeping a balance of confusion and perplexity. Maybe one day my choice will be that I'd rather know the details of trigger amounts than avoid potential pain. But today, the choice is easy. Confusion and perplexity. And carob.