A moment of clarity

I've been trying to puzzle through, to the extent I can, the various things that trigger migraines for me. Some are pretty clear cut, if weird (like the smell of asphalt or tires, flashing lights, changes in barometric pressure that come before rain, and chocolate), but others have been elusive. In particular, I've been stumped as to why so many mornings I wake up feeling fine, good even, but within an hour or so am in pain.

Until today. Maybe.

This morning I puttered around, getting my stuff ready for church, and felt great. Made breakfast (peanut butter toast -- try not to be too jealous of my glamorous life) and sipped coffee. I'd gotten through about half the toast when Daisy decided to freak out at a neighbor's lawnmower. At 7:30 a.m., but that's another post. Anyway, so I put down the toast, wrestled her back into the family room and played some fetch to soothe her. After about 10 minutes of this, I became sort of dimly aware that my head was starting to hurt. So I headed to the kitchen to get some medicine and on my way past the breakfast bar, grabbed a half-eaten piece of peanut butter toast -- and a light went on for me.

To experiment, I didn't eat any more. Just took a couple of Advil and drank more coffee to see what would happen. And sure enough, the headache got a little worse but finally sort of leveled off and then dissipated. I decided to push further -- and ate the rest of the (cold) toast. And wham! Another headache. Worse this time.

The rest of my little experiment isn't terribly interesting to anyone but me, but I really think I've stumbled onto something. It would explain why adding Benadryl to whatever other medicine I take usually makes the headache resolve sooner. And it would also explain why I can eat a small (couple of Kisses' worth) of chocolate without risking pain, but even the smallest amount of Nutella brings me to tears.

I really hope my nonscientific experiments are right and I'm on to something. I really do.