Two Things I Did to Get Rid of my Migraine Headaches

For as long as I can remember, going back to early childhood I had unbearable headaches. As a child I went to doctors whose only words of wisdom were that I was either overweight, thus causing the problem or that it was ‘All in my head’ no pun intended. After a while you just learn to deal with the pain and work through it.

It wasn’t until after I was finished University and married that my wife made the first real advancement in preventing my headaches: she discovered my inability to consume MSG.

MSG is MonoSodium Glutamate and is found in almost every processed food you can imagine. It is marketed as a taste enhancer, but what it really is, at least to me, is MIGRAINE FOOD.

Withing fifteen minutes of eating anything containing MSG I will start to feel a sharp pain behind my right eye… I call it MSG pain. Before discovering that MSG was a migraine trigger I probably consumed it every day of my life. Read the ingredients list on your favorite canned foods and snacks – you’ll be amazed at what contains MSG. Cutting MSG out of my life eliminated 50% of my headaches and almost ALL of my migraines.

I owe the second headache prevention technique to my wife as well. For about five years now I have had a ‘voluntary prescription’ for eyeglasses from my optometrist. Basically, it was a VERY mild prescription that I only had to get if I felt I wanted the glasses. Well, who wants glasses right? Unfortunately for me I had an astigmatism which caused everything to be just a little blurry, but caused my eyes to work overtime focusing the light. At the end of a day I would start to build up to a massive headache 3 or 4 nights a week. I simply wrote this off to stress at work.

Once she convinced me to actually go and buy a pair of glasses (which, by the way, I did grudgingly and bought the cheapest pair possible since I WASN’T going to wear them anyways!) I was amazed after two days wearing the glasses that corrected for astigmatism I was headache free. Instead of a dozen painkillers a week I now take one or two a month!

So, to recap, two things to look for if you have uncontrollable headaches and have tried everything:
1.MSG in your diet
2.Astigmatism in one or both eyes and you don’t wear glasses.

As a small aside, when you do get headaches I cant tell you how much of a godsend the Excedrin Extra Strength pills they sell in the United States are. They are basically half Tylenol, Half Aspirin and some caffeine. They work miracles and even tone down the migraines. I ran out once and actually took a Tylenol, an aspirin and chugged a cup of cold coffee but unfortunately it had no effect!

Well, thats my story, hope it helps someone with a Eureka moment in dealing with their headaches.