Karen Murphy says:
February 17, 2011 at 12:20 pm
After years of suffering from debilitating migraines and sever nausea with vomiting, I have finally found some great information regarding migraines, cyclic vomiting syndrome and the link to tyramine. I wish I new this 10 years ago. Only if you know me and have actually observed an “episode”, no one ever believed me. Not my doctors, employers or friends. I would wake up in the middle of the night with severe nausea and a bad “headache”. Vomiting always followed. The thing that is bad is that it would last for hours to days. The vomiting was so bad, that I would retch/vomit at least 10 times and hour. I would go in the shower and have to lay down and let the hot water just beat on me for at least 20 minutes. This is the only relief. After 12 hours, I usually end up in the emergency room because of the dehydration and non stop vomiting. The migraine would never go away until the vomiting stopped. Now that I look back, I can see the pattern. I love liverwurst, ham, pickles, everything that is on the list for foods to avoid. Thank you for this web site.
My son has been vomiting every week at 3 am in the morning for 6 weeks now. He is very food sensitive already off dairy and all artificial additives except nitrates so far. We are really suspicious of amines and this helps to confirm our suspicion. Thanks for the article.
Dear Fiona, I hope you are following up your suspicions about amines by reducing all those that are reported as causing reactions [you can see Are You Food Sensitive? for detail.] This will also mean excluding foods with nitrates as most of these are aged as well. It is wise to also think about the other group of foods that also cause reactions. These are the salicylates. You can find out if they are a problem by eating some that are often reported as causing reactions such as meals high in spice, herbs, concentrated tomato, peppermint and acidic fruit. And there is also MSG naturally present in foods like soy sauce to keep in the back of your thinking. Remember cutting out groups of food and having symptoms reduce is helpful, but the way we truly clarify which foods are the problem is by testing the most desired ones, one at a time, increasing over seven days. This is where Tolerating Troublesome Foods becomes very useful as it has information on how and why reactions can vary, as well as information on over 300 foods giving hints on how to maximize tolerance of the foods most wanted in your child and family. It is worth testing foods as early in the day as 10.00am to 2.00pm as they may be better tolerated at that time, whereas having a suspect food into the early evening is more likely to produce a reaction through the night. I wish you well in relieving your child of his distressing symptoms. Joan