15 Best Foods for Maintaining Healthy Serotonin Level in Migraine Patients

Mung beans, lobster, turkey, asparagus, sunflower seeds, cottage cheese, pineapple, tofu, spinach and bananas are the first ten.

They are recommended by pediatrician and natural health expert Dr. Caroline Longmore in her ebook The Serotonin Secret. The book has "50 recipes designed to solve serotonin imbalance without drugs. The concept works on the same principle as selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), such as popular antidepressant Prozac."

Chicken, sardines, salmon, fresh tuna, nuts and seeds are the additional 5 foods that will boost your serotonin levels.

These, along with turkey, are the foods recommended by Britain's Food and Mood Project.

What all these foods have in common? They are a natural source of tryptophan. Inside our bodies, tryptophan is converted into serotonin, the substance that makes us feel pretty darn good about things.

Many migraine people have low levels of serotonin. It can drop even lower right before a migraine attack. We even have special drugs to level out the serotonin when we need it - triptans.

The idea behind eating tryptophan-rich foods is that if we maintain higher levels of serotonin in our bodies, we might be able to reduce the frequency of the migraine headaches.

Whether eating lots of turkey will help one to achieve that lofty goal will depend on other factors. For example - if the dietary intake of calcium and magnesium is not balanced well, the tryptophan will not be converted into serotonin efficiently. Same goes for stomach acidity - it will affect how tryptophan is ingested.

Also, if your body thinks you have too much serotonin and tryptophan, it might start converting serotonin into melatonin - the sleepy hormone. You might be familiar with the concept - it's the common American post-Thanksgiving dinner drowsiness that many of us experienced first-hand. And no, this phenomenon does not really happen because we eat too much turkey. It happens because we eat all the staffing and other side-dishes that traditionally go along with it. Broil a piece of turkey and see if eating it without any side-dishes puts you to sleep. Didn't think so.

While the natural tryptophan food goodness does sound like a good idea, we, the migraine people, should always make sure that the foods recommended in this or that diet are not amongst our food-triggers. If they are, there are always tryptophan dietary supplements we can try instead.

link: 10 foods to make you happy