What’s Causing My Headaches?

For a number of years I’ve been getting what I call my toothache headaches or a headache in my jaw or sinuses.  I have a pain in my upper jaw that is like a headache & there can also be pain in other parts of my forehead.  In the last 2 years I’ve ended up in hospital twice & put on a drip with a severe migraine & not being able to stop vomiting.

I have been wondering what has been causing these headaches or what the triggers might be.  So far I haven’t been able to totally pin point the causes or triggers but I do have some ideas.  I do believe that tiredness can be a factor and am considering what  food triggers I might be consuming.  Sometimes I do get an aura which may or may not lead to a headache.

When I was a child I used to get regular headaches and would often vomit once & then be okay.  Looking back they were probably migraines.  One day I ate a rotten cherry tomato, ended up with a headache and didn’t eat tomato again for years.  I used to love tomatoes but stopped eating them after the rotten tomato episode.   I did start slowly eating tomatoes again.  Looking back I do wonder if tomatoes are part of what triggers my headaches.  My son is intolerant to potato & apparently this goes hand in hand with tomato.  More recently I have tried to limit my intake of tomato.  I have been starting to notice that if I eat a meal with lots of tomato or tomato paste that I’m often not sleeping as well that night.

Recently I was discussing the headache/migraine issue with someone and she mentioned the 4 C’s to avoid.  She listed them as chocolate, coffee, cheese & citrus.  This made some sense to me.  I don’t drink coffee & the one time I did have a cup of coffee I ended up with a headache.  I know that the caffeine in chocolate & even tea can keep me awake for hours.  I always loved cheese before eating a mostly dairy free diet.  I’ve heard it said that you often love or hate a food that can cause you problems.  My son hated dairy & I loved it yet we are both intolerant to it.  Cheese is probably the one dairy item I still eat the most, especially if there’s a nice cheese platter around.  For some reason I associate eating oranges with getting a headache so this may be a culprit.

The first time I ended up in hospital with a migraine I had just started regularly having a hot lemon & ginger drink to start the day.  I remember having a headache the day I got the first bad migraine and feeling like I was going to throw up after I had my lemon & ginger drink.  I had been thinking it was just my normal headache, I would take some pain killers and go about my day.  That was not to be the case my son could tell how bad I was & woke my daughter to drive him to school.  I ended up spending the day in bed, throwing up a number of times, then went to the doctor the next morning, who gave me an anti-nausea injection & sent me to the hospital.  After finding out about the 4 C’s I have stopped having my regular lemon & ginger drink again.

After googling the 4 C’s of migraines I found out about a 5th C.   The 5th C that some articles talk about is Claret or any red wine.  Red wine is something that I wouldn’t drink as I think it tastes like medicine but perhaps that’s a good thing.  There was also a number of other potential triggers written about in the articles I found.  The triggers will probably be different for different people.  Many articles talked about looking back to see if you can work out the cause or keeping a food diary and cutting things out to see if it lessons headaches or migraines.

I have been eating a lot less tomatoes, capsicum and have now reduced my citrus intake as well.  Since ending up in hospital earlier this year and perhaps changing my diet a bit I’ve had fewer, less severe headaches.  If I have felt a headache I’ve usually only had to take one lot of painkillers, once and not a couple of types of painkillers, for a few days on end.

To work out more accurately what is causing my headaches I might need to keep a food diary and try an elimination diet to see if I can pinpoint some causes.  I’m assuming that my headaches/migraines are caused by a number of environmental & food factors that when they reach a certain point trigger a headache.  In some instances which I’m yet to work out why, this can lead to a migraine.

Have you experience headaches or migraines?  If so have you been able to work out some treatment or causes to help lessen the likelihood of experiencing a headache/migraine?