Keto dieters assemble – migraine treatment

I am getting crushed by migraines. Absolutely crushed. And the merry-go-round of drugs that are supposed to prevent them is proving exhausting and frustrating in equal measure.

There is a ton of good, research evidence that a ketogenic diet can be hugely beneficial for migraine. I know from experience of experimenting with it that it is helpful. For my migraine, it does seem that carbs and sugar are the enemy.

I need to commit hard and go keto for at least six months – it’s years since I have gone more than a few days between migraine attacks. My brain needs ketones to heal. And I need to catch a break.

So, who has tried keto? Who has sustained it? What did you eat? How did you make it work, while still being healthy (i.e. getting your veggies in)? I am wildly allergic to dairy, so can it be done without cheese? What resources or recipe books did you work from? Did you take any supplements? Any other migraine sufferers found success this way? What about travel and being away from home with work or for holidays? Eating out with friends?

years ago I started getting migraine auras. Scared the crap out of me at first until I googled it! But I always popped a couple of paracetamol and they cleared fairly quickly & never developed into headaches etc. But they started happening more frequently so after more googling that is when I started a low-simple-carb (but not keto) diet. (iDave diet from here, which shows how long ago it was!! 😉 )

Coincident or not but the auras disappeared and, although I only kept up the diet rigidly for 6 months, never came back. (lost loads of weight also!)

I did try keto briefly afterwards, couldn’t be bothered to sustain it though. Eating veg is not a problem at all, just avoid the starchier ones (peas, sweetcorn & obviously potatoes). No, cheese is not an essential nutrient so perfectly doable without!!

Not Keto but followed Moseley’s Low Carb, Hi Fat / Protein diet very successfully (the Fast 800 and BSD recipe books very really good).

I’ll admit I lean quite heavily on the dairy (cheese / yoghurt) but it’s doable without. Plenty of veggies and protein FTW.

I’ve been on Keto since May, although been a bit more relaxed during holidays over the past 4 weeks or so. Pretty good from a weight loss point of view, I lost 12 kg quite easily. Its just about routine and, once you are in that routine, its easy enough. I get though a fair bit of cheese and greek yoghurt though!

It can be testing if eating out. Lunch buffets at work meetings is also harsh. The big thing for me though is understanding where carbs are, how many there are and how low carb is generally good. So, even if I am not doing actual ketosis, I am still drastically reducing carbs. I feel much better for it.

I paid for the Keto Diet App. Good for tracking carbs, learning about the diet and getting good recipe suggestions. Its a bit like MyFitnessPal but for Keto.

I’ll not stay on Keto once I get to my weight target, but I will definitely stay on a much lower carb diet.

For my migraine, it does seem that carbs and sugar are the enemy.

Just out of interest, does it have to be Keto or would it be enough to cut out carbs?

I think doing pure keto involves really having to plan (from what I remember you are limited to 1g of protein for each kg of body weight) whereas simply cutting out carbs is a lot easier.

No experience of Keto but you absolutely have my sympathy. Been battling horrible migraines for years. Thinks that have helped reduce them:
– elimination of chocolate. Even tiny amounts
– coming off caffeine. The withdrawal was awful, bit it seems to have had an effect.
– high dose magnesium and vit B2.
– Ajovy. I don’t know if you’ve started the process of moving to a neurologist referral but stay with it. It’s a long and arduous journey of knock backs and people not taking you seriously, but actually getting to a headache clinic was brilliant. My nurse is fantastic and really worried with me to find the best solution. If I were on the same position again I’d pay to go private through somewhere like the Migraine Trust.
Feel free to pm me if you want to chat about my expressive if that side of things.
Healing vibes my dude. It can be really, really shit.

It’s pretty daunting to get into,, especially if your favourite food is bread… But once you’re in, it’s not bad.

How did you make it work, while still being healthy (i.e. getting your veggies in)?

This is probably worth touching on because keto is different things to different people. For me it’s mainly unprocessed foods, so meat, and vegetables. Lots of diverse salads soaked in olive oil. I eat vegetables that I never knew existed until recently – they tend to make up most of my plate. If there are some you don’t like, chop them up small. Lots of eggs. A little bit of yoghurt. Loads of nuts and seeds. A small amount of berries. Learn to make curries and stuff if you haven’t already. Probably sounds grim if you’re used to pizza and chicken nuggets but you develop a much greater appreciation for these things.

If you eat like this, you’ll be fairly close to how people have eaten for thousands of years. It’s exactly the stuff we’ve evolved to eat, so pretty healthy.

At first I was worried about transitioning in and out of ketosis if I took on too many carbs but I’ve not found it a problem whatsoever. I can have a cheat day and feel no different to the day before. There is definitely a transition in the first week or two though.

Might also be worth looking into intermittent fasting too, or even short water fasts.

Get real advice from a proper dietician.   There is so much nonsense talked about this

Going into ketosis is dangerous and unhealthy .  Fortunately few of these supposed keto diets will put you into ketosis as the contain carbs.  Most veg contains carbs.  All fruit does

Proper keto diets are used in managing epilepsy but need medical supervision and are very hard to do.

If you ate eating veg and fruit it is not a keto diet   a proper keto diet you will need fibre and vitamin supplements.

Most folk who claim to be following a keto diet are actually low carb.

Get real advice from a registered dietician.   Nutritionist is a meaningless label and is often used by charlatans

Keto for quite a while. Full carnivore for 6 months. Absolutely fantastic results. Mental acuity improved, loads of energy, arthritis greatly improved, fantastic sleep. Can’t fault it. 53 going on 23. Beef, eggs and salt is all the human body needs to thrive.

Lots of great info on YouTube. Dr Ken Berry, Dr Bart Kay, Dr Anthony Chaffee and Kent Carnivore are all good. It really works.

Beef eggs and salt  only is seriously unhealthy and will put you in an early grave.  No question at all.  No fibre. Missing lots of vitamins.  High in known carcinogens

Do not take advice off youtube

TJ with all due respect you don’t know what you’re talking about. Fibre is not required by the human body in any way. In fact it causes more problems than not. Beef and eggs have all the required nutrition to maximise health. Fact.

Fibre is not required by the human body in any way. In fact it causes more problems than not.

I think there’s pretty strong evidence that a lack of fibre in your diet leads to an increased risk of bowel cancer, amongst other things. It seems it’s also pretty important to establishing a healthy gut biome. Something that we are only recently beginning to realise the importance of.

Utter nonsense lambchop.1) diet high in red meat is proven to increase your risk of bowel cancer. 2) A diet low in fibre is proven to increase your risk of bowel cancer.3) where are you getting your vitamin C?  D? ( plus loads of other vitamins missing from that diet)  Want scurvey?  That diet will give it to you

At least supplement it with a load of fibre and with vitamins.

Find me one article backing those folk you mention in a proper peer reviewed paper. .  I mean something like nature or BMJ

to the OP – as IU know that a proper keto diet is proven to help reduce epilepsy then migraine being related it may be worth trying ( I have never heard of it being used for migraine but it seems plausible) but for heavens sake please get proper advice and supervision and supplement with fibre and vitamins

Fibre is not required by the human body in any way. In fact it causes more problems than not

Sorry lambchop, this is utter garbage. Fiber is one of the handful of foods that has been consistently found to reduce mortality. There is a lot of evidence in proper scientific journals if you are actually interested.

As just one example an analysis covering 3.5 million people showed “This comprehensive meta-analysis provides additional evidence supporting the protective association between fiber intake and all-cause and cause-specific mortality rates”.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38011755

YT is not normally the best place to go to for diet advice, but if you have a spare 4 hours I can recommend Dave MacLeod’s video on the subject.  Saying that, it’s been a couple of years since I watched it which I did prior to experimenting with Keto.

Two things from my experiment.  The first is that if you have a young family it’s going to be a struggle.  You need to prepare at least two meals every mealtime and your one is going to take the most planning, measuring, and general obsessive attention to detail (at least at first).

The second is that over the course of the month I struggled with feelings of dehydration, no matter how much water I drank.  Much of the initial weight you lose on keto will be water weight and I think not having that extra water in your body can affect some people somehow.  Possibly it’s something I would have gotten used to.

Like I said though, full keto might not be necessary if it’s just carbs that are the problem.  I would recommend starting with something less restrictive.

Mikhaila Fuller (Peterson) reversed all sorts of ailments through eating a carnivore diet. As have countless amounts of people who have suffered inflammation in its many forms.

Fibre/fiber is totally unnecessary as are carbohydrates in a proper human diet. There is enough vitamin C in red meat for optimum health (if) you don’t eat carbs/sugar, fact.

Red meat does not cause cancer. Red meat is not carcinogenic.

We have been lied to for so long about what is the best diet. Sugar/carbs, seed oils and ultra processed foods are all insidiously deadly and slowly killing humanity. Look at the steady rise in obesity, cancer, Alzheimer’s etc. Big pharma and the multi national food corporations know this but don’t care because it’s all about the …… £$€££££

We have been lied to for so long about what is the best diet. Sugar/carbs, seed oils and ultra processed foods are all insidiously deadly and slowly killing humanity. Look at the steady rise in obesity, cancer, Alzheimer’s etc. Big pharma and the multi national food corporations know this but don’t care because it’s all about the …… £$€££££

Well you can’t win an argument with a conspiracy theorist so thanks for posting that so that everyone is aware of your position

Just putting the word ‘fact’ at the end of a statement which contradicts everything that is understood about a subject by the world’s medical and scientific establishment doesn’t make it right.  If your controversial claims debunking the scientific consensus are ‘facts’, you need to provide evidence.  And as with Ernie, anyone using the phrase ‘big pharma’ is a massive red flag to me.

Welcome TJ, this thread has been expecting you 🙂

I think a cautionary note is entirely fair, but describing ketosis as unsafe is just wrong.

Anyways, there are loads of papers on Pubmed about the efficacy of keto for migraine. And given that I am chronic, have failed with a number of preventatives, is the “risk” to my health worse than a bruised brain and damaged liver from all the meds? I’m taking a rounded view…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38941791/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37892410/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37209426/

To everyone else, thank you. Some good food for thought in this thread – I think I really need to get the ketones to soothe my brain. High frequency episodic migraine has done a number on me, and the more I read, the more it seems there is mounting evidence of migraine being a form of insulin resistance in the brain – hence keto to get rid of the sugar for a bit to let myself recover.

Good luck with getting to the bottom of it OP, sounds grim. Low carb, low sugar has got to be worth a try, but maybe not the extremes of an exclusive beef, egg, salt diet!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9456603/

Yeah, take away my spinach and brocoli are your peril! Love my greens 🙂

Beans and Greens are all you really need. Spice em up with other nuts, berries and fruit’n veg you”want”. and eggs…

I tend to eat low carb and have done for a few years now.

It can be difficult when travelling but I don’t travel as much as I used to, so that has simplified things.

As some have said, all veg contains carb but as a rule of thumb, if it grows above ground it has very little.

I tend to work on the 50g of carbs a day.

My diet can seem a bit dull, my go to meal is roast chicken and veg. Lots of broccoli, cauliflower, sprouts etc. depending what’s in season.

Cutting out flour, bread, pasta etc made a massive difference. Old injuries stopped aching and it even stopped my terrible snoring.

Carbs were a way of feeding a lot of people very cheaply.

Menothim

Anyways, there are loads of papers on Pubmed about the efficacy of keto for migraine. And given that I am chronic, have failed with a number of preventatives, is the “risk” to my health worse than a bruised brain and damaged liver from all the meds? I’m taking a rounded view…

I said I didn’t know if keto was good for migraine but it seemed plausible given I knew it worked for epilepsy and I would say that only you can decide if the risks are worth the benefits ( and keto does give risks)  In your position I would certainly want to try I think but please please please get proper advice and supplement with fibre and vitamins.    Risks of keto include increasing cancer risk, risks of mineral and vitamin deficiencies

Real keto is hard to do.  Most folk claiming to be keto are actually low carb.  When your body is in ketosis then you can smell the ketones in your urine

Most veg particularly roots contains a lot of carbs.  ( doubt spinach and broccoli has much but I do not know)

There is enough vitamin C in red meat

Wrong.  Just factually incorrect

Mikhaila Fuller is a grifter from a family of grifters

Most veg particularly roots contains a lot of carbs.

That’s wrong. Some root veg has relatively a lot but even then it’s not more 10% for turnips, carrots etc.

The trouble with any health/diet movement is that there are always ‘influencers’ who take it to extremes, and won’t countenance anything closer to a balanced view.

Academic studies on diet can be misleading, as they are hard to control against other lifestyle factors and dishonest/inaccurate participant reporting of consumption, so while they are ‘evidence’, they shouldn’t be considered gospel.

On a personal level, I’ve had short periods of pure ketosis, and longer periods of low carb, high green veg. I noticed large improvements in certain ‘inflammatory’ illnesses – mainly asthma, in my case – and weight loss, probably due to simple caloric deficit on a keto-like diet, aided by reduction in appetite/craving for shit food. But I don’t personally think hardcore keto is something that is sustainable or necessarily healthy in the longer term.

As with anything, trying to avoid listening too much to zealots either for or against will probably give you a more balanced perspective. Keto is not going to immediately kill you to death, or solve all your wordly ills. It might be a useful short-term tool to control inflammation, it might not.

As far as the OP’s issue goes, migraine is such a poorly-understood condition, and I can understand the desperation. A brief stint of keto might help reveal whether there are any inflammatory processes there, and help OP come up with a longer term diet which offers some of those benefits without being too one-dimensional.

Worth a go, I’d say.

Also, if you’ve not tried it, another drug-free experiment might be to look at whether there is a structural issue with muscle tightness around the neck, shoulder and face. I know people who have suffered ‘migraine-like’ symptoms connected to nerve impingement which were relieved significantly by physiotherapy and careful massage.

That’s wrong. Some root veg has relatively a lot but even then it’s not more 10% for turnips, carrots etc.

I would think that a lot in terms of attempting to put your body in ketosis but fair enough

I would think that a lot in terms of attempting to put your body in ketosis but fair enough

Yes. Trying to include root veg in a true keto diet would involve a) a very small amount and b) reducing the proportion of your vegetable carb ‘allowance’ that comes from healthier veg such as broccoli, cauliflower, etc. I always understood that carrots were out, and didn’t even consider anything starchier.

Academic studies on diet can be misleading, as they are hard to control against other lifestyle factors and dishonest/inaccurate participant reporting of consumption, so while they are ‘evidence’, they shouldn’t be considered gospel.

the studies I saw on keto and epilepsy were pretty good – many of the participants were inpatients so control of diet was pretty good and they also did a lot of blood testing.

the studies I saw on keto and epilepsy were pretty good – many of the participants were inpatients so control of diet was pretty good and they also did a lot of blood testing.

I’m talking about wider population studies (you need big numbers to find smallish effects over long periods of time) which rely on accurate recording and self-reporting of all sorts of stuff. The red/processed meat and cancer studies evidence is becoming clearer, but even then I’m left wondering whether it is just the top strata of sausage-eaters who have meaningful increased risk of colorectal cancer, and what else those chaps are up to which might be adding to their risk, be it alcohol consumption, lack of exercise, weird working patterns and sleep deficit etc.

[Mod] quoted text removed.

Which brings to mind all this nonsense about vitamin D, eh?

You can get all the vitamin D that you need from lard. Fact.

Fair enough martin.

to look at whether there is a structural issue with muscle tightness around the neck

This. There is a school of thought that neck/shoulder tension is a root cause of migraine. There have been claims that just wearing a night guard to minimise jaw clenching/teeth grinding has cured some people’s migraine.

Apparently tooth extractions have coincidentally cured some people’s migraines.

The pharmaceutical approach to migraine can involve large doses of anti-inflammatories, which also carries significant potential harms for your digestive system. Anything that avoids migraine patients having to neck loads of powerful NSAIDs is a good thing.

I see the FDA has now approved Botox as a potentially therapy, which points to some kind of muscular involvement in some people.

The prevalence of migraine or ‘migraine-like’ symptoms appears to have increased significantly over recent decades. Would be totally unsurprised to find some link between the neck positions of screen workers and home phone/screen users and quite a few of these cases.

If I were the OP, I’d be feeling around my jawline, neck, shoulders and upper arms for muscles that are painful to the touch and seeing if I could gently work out some tension. My wife at one point found she could press a certain point on her arm and cause an instant shooting pain behind her eyes…

Some good follow-ups here: In terms of background I have had migraine for 46 years, and it has escalated significantly in the past 8 years. Massage, acupuncture, chiro, dentistry, optometry, ergonomics of workplace have all been tried or examined.

I recognise the biggest factor is my life is stressful (because reasons), and that ain’t going to change any time soon. I work too much, and that likewise isn’t going to change.

And I now feel toxic whenever I have to medicate – I can only imagine the state of my liver after a lifetime of meds.

Equally, continuing to suffer teens of attacks per month and needing to medicate through – I’ve had enough.

Agreed that hardcore keto is going to be tough and isn’t for the long term. But hopefully six months to ease systemic and brain inflammation and a chance to have a rest – that would be wonderful. And cholesterol be damned – that’s what statins are for.

My wife at one point found she could press a certain point on her arm and cause an instant shooting pain behind her eyes…

An acupuncturist might confirm that. It’s probably on the spleen meridian or something similar.

My Chinese acupuncturist friend taught me to relieve toothache by pressing hard between my thumb and forefinger. I will sometimes complain about a pain or ache somewhere and she will press a completely different part of the body and ask if it is tender or sore. Invariably I am not aware that it is until she prods. It genuinely never ceases to amaze me how she knows how these things are connected.

Agreed that hardcore keto is going to be tough

I guess there are two ways of going about things.  You can either cut things out (such as carbs) one by one until things improve. Or you can cut everything out (full keto) and then try adding things back in gradually to see what happens.

I guess going for fully keto would be best for you since it would tell you straight away whether it was worth continuing with?  Then if it did work you could start by re-introducing proteins*.  Then some unrefined carbs, etc.  Or maybe just carbs when exercising.

Hope it all works out for you!

*Obviously you’ll still be eating some protein but the actual amount of protein is far less than most people think when they are talking about keto.