Can the onset of headaches be linked to one's diet? According to a recent Turkish scientific study, the connection is certain. At Istanbul Medipol University, a group of researchers led by Hande Bakırhan, professor in the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at the Faculty of Health Sciences, analysed subjects with episodic migraine aged between 18 and 64. The researchers focused in particular on the relationship between dietary behaviour patterns and migraine attacks.

More fruit and vegetables, fewer migraines

The research, published in Nutritional Neuroscience, highlighted how closely dietary habits are linked to migraine attacks. The group used the Healthy Eating Index-2010 as a benchmark to assess diet quality. The results showed that people who follow the Mediterranean diet in their daily lives suffer fewer migraines, or at least experience them less frequently and with less intensity. The same result was also found for those who follow the DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension).

In essence, the research states that consuming more fruit, vegetables, pulses and oil seeds alleviates the unpleasant symptoms of headaches.

Omega-3s reduce the pain and duration of migraines

This is not the first time, however, that a scientific study has found how the Mediterranean diet helps reduce the frequency of migraine episodes, especially in women. Last July, the British Medical Journal published an American study involving 182 patients with frequent migraines (between 5 and 20 episodes per month), which concluded that the Mediterranean diet, rich in omega-3s, can reduce headache attacks. By testing three types of diet in which omega-3 and omega-6 levels varied, the researchers demonstrated that in some cases levels of oxylipin improved — a molecule capable of reducing pain. The study is therefore highly useful for managing not only migraine patients, but all clinical conditions involving chronic pain. Understanding how to use omega-3s and omega-6s in the diet is proving to be a major potential avenue for advancing knowledge of nociception, that is, all the mechanisms in the body involved in the perception of pain.

Diet and headaches in younger patients

Other research in this field is focusing on children and adolescents. A study from the Bambino Gesù hospital in Rome published in Nutrients found that a high frequency of migraine attacks affects 65 per cent of overweight children compared with 35 per cent of those with a normal weight.

Several factors contribute to triggering headache attacks or increasing their frequency, including emotional responses, but diet always plays an important role. Certain foods have been implicated in triggering severe headaches in younger patients, such as chocolate, foods containing gluten and cured meats (due to the nitrites they contain), but to date no definitive list of foods applicable to everyone exists. The conclusion reached by researchers in the Department of Neurosciences at the Bambino Gesù children's hospital — who examined the existing scientific literature and dispelled a number of myths — is that only verification in the individual patient of a relationship between the consumption of a specific food and the onset of a headache can serve as proof that that food triggers migraines in that child.