Are There Foods I Eat That Might Enhance The Pain I Feel?

— -- Question: Are There Foods I Eat That Might Enhance The Pain I Feel?

Answer: First of all, it's important to recognize that pain is heterogeneous. And we have migraine pain for headaches, we have irritable bowel syndrome, and chronic abdominal pain, we also have chronic back pain. These are several of the most common forms of chronic pain.

In general, chronic painful conditions are neither worsened nor alleviated by food with one important exception. Neurologists and physicians have known for decades that migraine headache is very sensitive to certain foods such as caffeine or even unfortunately chocolate. Also, individual patients may notice that substances as seemingly as, food seemingly as innocuous as dairy products or eggs can worsen headaches. And that's why with chronic headache, neurologists are very careful to instruct their patients to keep a food diary in order to identify the potential foods that are exacerbating headaches, and sometimes eliminate these from the diets. And it's also important to know that these foods can change with time.

So this is not a kind of a monolithic entity of one food will always cause headache. Certain other foods may emerge that can aggravate headaches as well.

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