OK, Why Didn’t I Know This: Migraines and Complex Sugars

Friends. First, Blessed Good Friday! I hope everyone is having a lovely day, and that if you are having to work (like me) that it’s going smoothly and you have time to reflect on the day at hand. I’d like to give a nod to Adam over at Where the Wind … his post today, as I said in the comments … Wow, just wow. It moved me. Please go read it 🙂

Now on to migraines and complex sugars, and the brave new world of possibly TMI. If you’re joining me for the first time here, I have migraines.* I know for a fact that High Fructose Corn Syrup is a primary trigger, and that artificial sweeteners do a number on me. I gave up Nutrasweet about 10 years ago, at divinity school, when I had an inkling that it was causing my back to have ridiculous muscle spasms. I can’t even begin to tell you how much pain I was in. I’d heard that they could range in severity, but I didn’t realize just how much they could affect you. My friend suffered from them quite a lot, and in the end, she decided to look for some of the best CBD oil UK products that she could find to help relieve some of these painful symptoms, and luckily for her, it helped massively and she continues to use it as a short term treatment plan even now. But I decided to take a different route. I stopped drinking Diet Coke and cut out all Nutrasweet, and I haven’t had a weirdo muscle spasm in my back since.

So, why in the world is it just today that I happened to search for more info around complex sugars and found out that, according to this article at Access Medication, those artificial sweeteners (especially aspartame, aka Nutrasweet) are known migraine triggers? Hrmph. This makes good sense. I don’t think my body can break down fake sweeteners normally. I don’t have any medical proof on this, but sometimes you just know things by observing reactions.

And the reason I was searching for this stuff again? Well, I started taking probiotics like three weeks ago. But then, after taking them, I started to get tired, feel gross, and then I started getting a higher frequency of migraines. I figured there was something going on, so I researched probiotics and found out that many include chickory, FOS, and inulin, which are all complex sugars that can be difficult to break down. A friend of mine recently has also been struggling with similar issues. She told me that she had started taking a supplement similar to a glutathione supplement and antioxidizing teas to help her detox. If these are successful then I may consider them for myself.

Ugh! All that effort to avoid bad sugars and I discover I’m inadvertently putting them into my system twice a day!

I guess the lesson learned here is that I really do need to stay vigilant about what I’m ingesting. It’s not a matter of just assuming that the nice lady at the health food store understands the complexities of what it means when I say “I have migraines, will that vitamin/supplement be OK for me? ” No, I need to understand what’s in the thing I’m buying before I commit to taking it.

The light at the end of the tunnel is that I stopped taking the probiotic yesterday and already am starting to feel better today. What a relief. OK, now go have a lovely Friday and take good care of yourselves 🙂

*I’m not a doctor, and I don’t even play one on TV. So, here’s my caveat – don’t take any of my advice and run with it on your own. I’ve gone to multiple doctors, including a couple of neurologists to diagnose me and help figure out my triggers. Please go seek out medical advice if you’re getting headaches you don’t understand, or if you’re getting new kinds of headaches. This stuff can be serious, and should not be left to self-diagnosis based on blogger advice.