8 Things You Need To Know About The Keto Diet And Migraine

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Simply put, a ketogenic diet is a diet that produces ketone bodies, according to Angel L. Moreno, NP, at the UCLA Goldberg Migraine Program in Los Angeles. While many cells in the body, particularly brain cells, prefer glucose as an energy source, the body can also use ketones as an alternative energy source if glucose is not available. RELATED: What’s the Difference Between Ketosis and Diabetic Ketoacidosis? In the early 1900s, researchers found that starvation was an effective way to stop seizures in people with some types of epilepsy, Supraketo Weight Loss Formula Keto with seizures typically improving after two to three days, according to a history of the ketogenic diet published in Epilepsia. Eventually, researchers began successfully treating some patients with the ketogenic diet and other carbohydrate-restricting diets, Supraketo.org including the Atkins diet and the modified Atkins diet. Migraine and epilepsy have a lot of overlapping mechanisms, says Moreno. "We use anti-epileptic medications for some people who have migraine, including divalproex sodium (Depakote), topiramate (Topamax), and gabapentin (Neurontin) - these are all anti-epileptic medications," he says.



The causes of migraine are multifactorial, with one potential factor relating to metabolism, says Moreno. "This means the ability for the body to extract energy from the food that we eat, the water we drink, the air that we breathe - all of that has to be metabolized so that the brain can use it as a fuel source. If there’s ever a deficit of energy that’s being delivered to the central nervous system, one theory is that it can cause irritation in the nerves and then trigger migraine," he says. Stress can trigger migraine as well, because when we’re stressed, our metabolic demand increases, Supraketo Fat Burner says Moreno. "Our heart beats faster, our blood rushes from our core to our extremities to either run or fight. There’s a lot of metabolic demand," he says. If we’re burning carbohydrate as our only fuel source, the carbohydrate has to break down into glucose, which then gets transported into cells via the insulin transport process, he explains.
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"Insulin takes the glucose and moves it from the outside of the cell to the inside of the cell, where it can be used for fuel," says Moreno. The problem is that there is evidence that right before and during migraine, our cells become insulin-resistant - or less sensitive to the effects of insulin - for a period of time, he says. "If we’re solely dependent on carbohydrates and glucose and other kinds of sugars, then we’re out of luck; our cells aren’t going to get nourished. But if we also have ketones in our system, ketones have three different pathways to passively go into cells and nourish them, versus only one path for glucose to go into cells," he says. The path for glucose is solely dependent on insulin, and so if you develop any kind of resistance to that insulin, that’s a problem, says Moreno. Several small studies or case reports on people who suffer from migraines have described positive results when the subjects followed a ketogenic diet, but the cumulative number of participants has been very low.



A somewhat larger pilot study with 96 participants compared overweight women with migraine who followed a very-low-calorie keto diet for one month, followed by a standard, low-calorie diet for five months, with a similar group of women who followed a standard, low-calorie diet for six months. The study found that the keto diet was more effective at bringing about a reduction in migraine. In the first month of the trial, the keto group adhered to a restrictive diet of 800 calories and only 30 grams of carbohydrate per day. Their attack frequency dropped from 2.9 to 0.71, number of days with headaches went from 5.11 to 0.91, and acute treatment taken dropped from 4.91 doses to 0.51 doses per month. After the keto diet was stopped, all of those measurements temporarily worsened, but then the group continued to improve through the end of the study. There’s evidence that the metabolic breakdown of carbohydrate is pro-inflammatory, and inflammation is associated with migraine, says Moreno.