Sunday, May 21, 2006

headaches

Most of the time I know where my headaches stem from. When it is stress related there are other symptoms that occur in my body prior to the onset of a headache. I know when I've not had enough of sleep, when my blood pressure is high, if I'm a little dehydrated, had too much sun, way too many cups of coffee, slept in a bad position for my neck, ingested through my nose irritants, caffeine withdraw, suffering from allergy symptoms, or just plain getting sick; but who would think that food may be the source? Food sure gets a bad rap for a lot of ailments. Chemicals in many foods lead to the swelling of blood vessels in your head. Caffeine can relieve headaches by constricting blood vessels but once caffeine wears off, the pain can return worse than before like a rebound headache. Could it be meats with the nitrites used to preserve hot dogs, sausage and lunch meat? How about alcohol besides drinking too much (hangover), the more congeners in red wine, brandy, and champagne are sure triggers. Aged cheese like Brie and blue cheese contain the amino acid tyramine, a natural by-product of the aging process can also cause headaches if allergic to any of the these mentioned foods. Check with your doctor about eliminating these foods from your diet; then reintroduce them one by one to see if the chemicals in them are a factor. I even had a friend one time who's father got headaches if he ate eggs.

The reason I talked about headaches is I had a few this past weekend. Some of the reasons were listed up above but the bigger culprit was the fact that I walked around for three days twelve hours each, maybe one or two meals a day if lucky, and I came home with a GAIN! What's up with that? Let's label that a stress headache.

1 comment:

Louisiana said...

why did you walk so much? and ate so little? maybe your body went into starvation mode and that is the increase or maybe it's water retention...when i walk way too much i swell up too...

i never got headaches when i was younger but now i have them once in a while...

i hope yours end soon and never come back...

hugs