I am celebrating: Almost 5 months without a migraine after 20 years of being at the mercy of them, sometimes twice a week, and often having to sleep them off for 24 hours each time.
So what has been the key to my cure?

A GLUTEN FREE DIET.
My partner had been trying to persuade me to give up wheat for two years and I tried but could never go all the way. Here in Italy we are surrounded by pizzas of every delicious kind, on every street corner; and of course every meal for our Italian friends has to include pasta. Every restaurant meal involves being tempted with a basket of fresh, often warm, bread, not to speak of the tiramisu and the endless range of yummy cakes and biscuits on offer everywhere.
I have had to learn to turn a blind eye to all this and find, with a great deal of effort and ingenuity, alternatives that give me a sense of having bread I can eat and cakes that are gluten free.

Luckily for me, my wobbly self-discipline is stiffened and fortified by Sofia, who has been eating gluten free for some years now for her own health reasons. It is so much easier doing it together.

I have also cut my consumption of dairy down to a small amount of kefir, recognising that I probably had some intolerance to dairy products all my life, inspite of, or perhaps because I grew up on a dairy farm.

We both believe that MANY people, like me, have developed an intolerance to modern wheat and/or to dairy, but don’t know it and put up with symptoms that remain the undiagnosed result.

The numbers of gluten free products in the shops are growing all the time, which is an indicator of demand and therefore of need. But this could just be the tip of the iceberg.

As a ‘fast metabolizer’ of food I have been stuffing in the carbs to try to keep my energy and my weight up all my life, only to find that I now have ‘leaky gut’ syndrome, which can only be healed by changing to a low carb, high protein, meat-based diet with lots of good oils and fats. I was vegetarian for some of my adult life and it appears this only made things worse. I tended to become hypo-glycemic with not enough protein and that, combined with the damage to my gut lining from taking strong migraine drugs for 20 years, has led to my condition now.

This is getting long, but it feels important to share with my friends, to spread the word about the dangers of wheat and dairy; and sugar of course, all three of which tend to be in the foods we all love so much and on which our western diet is based. It isn’t healthy and for some of us, it needs to be looked at seriously.

I am so glad to have found a route back to health without drugs, all credit and thanks to my carina Sofia, I am migraine-free and I feel so much more vital, alive and open to the world inspite of the gut issues I am still dealing with.

Its hard to take all this in after 20 years. So I am celebrating today.

Sofia is just taking a tray of delicious muffins out of the oven – gluten/dairy/sugar free, high protein muffins, of course. so I must now sign off to let my taste buds join my olfactory organs!

I will post the MUFFIN RECIPE in my next post and will send it to anyone who contacts me for the details.