Not only do migraines respond to manual therapy techniques as Dean Watson has shown, but there are other factors in what enters our mouths on a daily basis, that can be modified to help.
Migraine sufferers display an interesting way of dealing with sodium in their cells and waterworks, and so one easy strategy to assist, is to add salt to the water when drinking.
A migraine brain has difficulty balancing sodium and struggles to metabolise glucose. A mechanism occurs where glucose enters the cell and sodium correspondingly exits, and this causes an electrolyte imbalance.
Wasting of sodium occurs through urination in migraineurs, giving rise to the state that leads into migraines. Secondarily, the pumps that exchange these chemicals malfunction, which causes a swelling in the neuron or nerve cell.
A proposed simple strategy to improve this is to add salt to the water for hydration across the day. Angela Stanton, a migraine researcher advocates natural ways to prevent and manage migraine. She has also researched the value of the ketogenic diet in migraine, in particular how the KD reduces inflammation in the body, and particularly the brain, which comes along with a high carbohydrate diet – the standard western diet we are so used to.
Dietary intervention that alters migraine: ketogenic or low carbohydrate diet which enables the patient to hang on to their sodium, because sodium is displaced by glucose which is plentiful in the standard western diet.
Supplementing drinking water with 300mg of salt (⅛ teaspoon) throughout the day, and eating foods with a 1:1 ratio of sodium to potassium helps prevent migraine.
Drinking water with salt increases the neurotransmitter Oxytocin: known to initiate comfort and reduce anxiety and stress.
Interestingly studies have shown that low carbohydrate diets are sufficient, but zero carb diets such as the carnivore diet were the most beneficial.
From personal experience I have experience a drastic reduction in headaches and zero migraines after one year on a carnivore diet, which after 3 months introduced avocado, pumpkin and lemon juice.After having daily headaches for a few years, I was able to quit panadol, codeine and anti nausea meds (probably countering the side effects of the former two drugs), and have been med free for a year as of 21 July 2024.