Nutrient intake lower on days with nausea or vomiting in episodic migraine

Key takeaways:

• A study analyzed patients with episodic migraine for nutritional intake during headache occurrence.
• Plant proteins were consumed considerably less than animal proteins on days when headache accompanied by nausea/vomiting.

SAN DIEGO —Individuals with episodic migraine had lower nutrient intake on days with nausea or vomiting compared with days without nausea, according to a poster from the American Headache Society Annual Scientific Meeting.

“We’re trying to understand how dietary intake might be impacted when people have a migraine attack with nausea versus without one,” Margaret Slavin, PhD, RDN, an associate professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Maryland, College Park, told Healio.

Slavin and colleagues initiated a pilot study that included 25 adults from a combination of community and clinical settings, all of whom were diagnosed with episodic migraine (4 to 14 headache days per month) and completed a nightly electronic headache diary for 28 days.

All participants completed eight random 24-hour dietary recalls conducted over the phone utilizing Nutrient Data System for Research software. Based on participant answers, daily nutritional intake was compared on headache days with non-headache days and divided into 12 nutrient categories including fats, carbohydrates, protein, dietary fiber, caffeine and vitamins (B1, B2, C through E, K), as well as measured by the Healthy Eating Index on a scale of 0 to 100 with the lower scores indicating lower quality.

Dietary intake was recorded on 73 days and subsequently analyzed over 66 days, 27 during which enrollees reported experiencing headache with nausea and 39 during times when a reported headache was experienced without nausea.

Among the initial cohort of 32 qualified individuals, 25 participated in the study and 24 were ultimately included in analysis.

According to results, dietary intake was lower across all nutrients on days when nausea or vomiting accompanied headache compared with days without nausea or vomiting. The largest difference between both categories was found regarding caffeine intake (137.9 mg on average on days without nausea/vomiting vs. 94 mg on days without).

The researchers further noted that plant proteins were consumed considerably less than animal proteins on headache days regardless of participants’ experience of nausea; however, consumption of plant proteins was lower on days with nausea or vomiting compared with days without nausea.

“What didn’t surprise us, is on days when people had a headache with nausea, nutritional intake was nominally lower across all of the nutrients,” Slavin said. “Calories, macronutrients, fats, carbs and most of the micronutrients, the vitamins.”