Adriana Duelo
Degree in Nutrition and Dietetics. Health Science Faculty, Blanquerna. Universitat Ramon Llull. Barcelona, June 2012.
INTRODUCTION
Migraine affects 12-17% of the adult population in western countries, without much variation in other countries, more than 1 in 10 people. According to the latest PALM study from 2006 (Action Plan to Fight Migraine) published in Cephalalgia, a journal of the International Headache Society, over 3.5 million people in Spain have this condition.
(1) Moreover, it is nowadays a very costly pathology to society: First, because of direct costs, particularly medical costs (diagnostic studies, consultations and pharmacological treatments); second, and just as significant, because of the economic losses it causes in the labour environment due to absenteeism from work and therefore reduced productivity.
(2) In Spain, 20 million working days are lost every year for this reason, which involves an approximate cost of 2,000 million euro. At European level, this cost reaches 27,000 million euro every year.
(3)There are different known causes that can trigger migraine, but the importance of nutrition is not known or not taken into account by most of the healthcare professionals who study and treat this syndrome. For decades, the correlation between migraine and nutrition has been limited to the listing of alleged trigger foods based on patient surveys but without any scientific basis.
This project attempts to go further and clarify the true origin of this correlation between nutrition and migraine. It has been proven that food itself is not the cause, but the patient’s individual
susceptibility depending on his/her body functionality. In other words, the purpose of this paper is to highlight the important and possibly prevailing correlation between nutrition and the triggering causes of migraine, but with a focus on the individual patient rather than food.