so, through trial and error, i found that onions are a trigger for me. I got hit two evenings in a row after eating a dish that was full of white onions. The 02 would abort it, id get up and resume my normal activities, and get hit again within 5 min. Id go back to the 02, it would abort, and be back within 5 min again. After the third abort with 02, it finally left. All of this happened again the second night (after eating many onions) After talking with my father(a cronic sufferer) he says onions are a big trigger for him. They have not seemed to bother me in the past years of my cycles, but it seems now they do. or it would seem anyhow. Im not eating them again to find out for sure. LOL.   Just thought Id throw that out there for what its worth.

We urge members to keep headache diaries to try and isolate triggers. Wont eliminate attacks, but it's sure nice to learn the sure fire triggers!

Joe

it is so hard to keep a diary. I'm so lazy lol. but i am good with mental notes. either way, it is good to make note of certain changes. that's one thing i've learned to do over the years. sucks you can't eat onions though. They are so freaking awesome  :D

I discovered that onione, especially spring onion tops (aka "green" onions) are a cluster headache trigger for me, as well as leeks, and to a lesser degree white and red bulb onions.

I used to be able to eat all onions fine as a kid and through my teens, I was about 24 years old when I went to Greece and worked on an onion farm for a month. The farmer was a fanatic about onions, so I adopted a spring (aka green onions) onion rich diet, and had it in lots of tabouleh salads and soups. A few months later I started to get the beginnings of cluster headaches, and then about a year later full blown ones. I removed things that were relatively new to my diet at that time--parsley, milk, wheat, feta cheeze, lots of red wine, new kinds of chocolate, new herbs and spices. It was a pain in the ass and I wasn't very consistant.

I finally realized it could be onions when I was about 30, as I was eating an onion sandwich and looking out my window into my spring onion garden, I started to get a headache. I then cut onions out of my diet, and the headaches slowly went away for good, returning occasionally, but I could always trace it to when  someone would slip onions into my food or I ate some anonymous looking soup.

I travelled to Indonesian and India, and that was real bad with regard to cluster headaches for the forst couple weeks, until I figured out what foods have onions and which don't.

Cooking them doesn't do any good. But garlic seems to be fine with me.

I wonder why I was fine when younger but have cluster headaches with onions now---I think I just over did it with onions in my mid-20's. I really did eat an ass load of them for a few years.

It's been about 4 years since I cut onions out of my diet, but my sensitivity to them doesn't seem to have diminished.

I hope this is useful for somebody. What a good forum!

--A