The Role of Different Diets in Migraine Control with an Emphasize on Suppressing Neuroinflammation

Migraine headache has been ranked as the highest contributor to disability in under 50 year’s old population in the world. Extensive researches have been conducted in order to clarify the pathological mechanisms of migraine. Although much uncertainty remains, thepresence of neuroinflammation and its consequent stimulation of the trigeminal vascular system might be principally responsible for migraine pain. However, the advances in the study of mechanisms of migraine should be integrated into treatment approaches for providingpain relieving effects and increasing quality of life in patients with migraine. With respect to this, one of the interesting areas within the integrative health studies pertains to dietary interventions. Although the number of studies concerning effects of diet on migraine is not yetvery large, the current article will review the available evidence in this area. So far, the first category of diets that their effect has been studied in relation to migraine includes fasting and ketogenic diets, low-calorie diet, and modified Atkins diet. These diets could mainly act through compensating serotoninergic dysfunction, inhibition of neuronal excitability, decreasing CGRP levels, brain mitochondrial function improvement, suppressing neuroinflammation and thus could reduce the severity of migraine headache. Also, there is a reasonable relationship between obesity and migraine. Therefore, weight loss diets have been reported to be effective in migraine improvement. Suppression of neuroinflammation, regulating adiponectin and leptin levels, affecting on hypothalamic function, enhancing insulin secretion and improvement of depression, a comorbidity of both obesity and headache, are among the proposed mechanisms of action of weight loss diets in migraine enhancement. Further, dietary fat intake and migraine headache have been linked to each other.The balance between the omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids, contribute to inflammatory control in response to the environmental metabolic changes. Moreover, dietary fats affect serotonin release from platelet.On the flip side, evidence showed the worsening of preexisting migraine in idiopathic thrombocytopenia, mainly during platelet destruction phase. Suppressing platelet aggregation seems to have therapeutic value in migraine prevention. Therefore, any modalities likereducing and plasma free fatty acids and plasma lipids that can enhance platelet aggregation, seems to decrease the frequency and duration of migraine headache. In addition, it has been proposed that elemental diet could be effective in migraine control. The suggested mechanismcould be relevant is that in both migraine and food sensitivities, inflammation induced by food could make the pro-inflammatory environment which is needed for the induction of headache by other triggers. And finally, low glycemic diet might also improve migraine characteristics through inhibition of neuroinflammation and correction of oxidative stress.