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Could your go-to tomato sauce or that spicy pepper dish be secretly triggering your migraines?
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In this episode, we are steering the pot on the nightshade debate.
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Migraine Heroes is a podcast for chronic migraine sufferers who've seen countless
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doctors with no results. Learn how to reduce your migraine attacks without endless medications
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or constant sacrifices. Hello, I'm Diane Ducarme. I've helped over 500 people break free from
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migraine, even after suffering for up to 60 years. My mission in life? To bring this relief
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to a million people using a unique blend of Eastern medicine and Western science.
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In this episode, you will learn how the nightshade family or vegetables, tomatoes, peppers,
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eggplants, etc. could potentially influence your migraine and pain threshold, and when they're
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likely guilty. A clear, science-based breakdown of the mechanisms in Western research and the
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Eastern medicine perspective on how these foods might affect your system. And a practical,
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listener-friendly protocol on how you can test whether nightshades are a trigger for you
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and your home. The term nightshade vegetables refers to the plant family Solanaceae, which
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includes many of our everyday foods such as tomato, bell pepper, chili peppers, eggplants,
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and white potatoes. These foods are nutritionally rich and culturally ubiquitous, and they've also
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been debated in the migraine and pain community as possible triggers. Many migraine sufferers
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report food-related triggers, and diet is a recurring theme. While formal studies on nightshades
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and migraines specifically are scarce, nightshades have been examined in the context of inflammation,
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pain conditions such as arthritis, and gastrointestinal triggers, which can overlap
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with migraine pathophysiology. For example, a recent review titled nightshade vegetables,
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a dietary trigger for worsening inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome,
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examined how these vegetables may affect gut mucosal mast cell activation and inflammation.
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And so one of the key hypothesized mechanisms is that nightshade vegetables contain glycoalkaloids
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such as solanine or tamatine, which are defense compounds that plants make. Now these can,
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in high amounts or in sensitive individuals, disrupt gut epithelial integrity or activate
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mast cells, a component of the immune system linked to pain, inflammation, and possibly migraine
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pathogenesis. Another relevant mechanism, while some animal studies in rodents linked solanine
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to intestinal permeability and inflammation, human data are far weaker. For example, the
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Arthritis Foundation found that there is no strong evidence that nightshade worsens joint
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inflammation or arthritis in humans. And also note that on the flip side, many of these nightshade
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vegetables are rich in antioxidants and beneficial phytonutrients, meaning that the story is far,
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far from one-sided, even in the Western world. So here are the Western hypotheses on how nightshades
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could affect migraine and your pain threshold in your home. In susceptible individuals,
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nightshades may act as a core trigger rather than primary cause. If gut permeability or
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mast cell degradation increases, this could raise systematic sensitization, lowering the threshold
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for pain signaling relevant to migraine, where central sensitization is key. And on the other
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hand, for many, nightshades might be neutral or beneficial. And the associations come from
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individuals already having heightened sensitivity. So nightshades would be acting like an amplifier
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on an existing issue rather than initiate it. The guidance from major health sources
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is along these lines. If you don't have a sensitivity, enjoy them. If you do, test and
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eliminate them. So from a Western science angle, the evidence does not definitely show that
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nightshades cause migraine or increase pain threshold across the board. But for individuals
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with chronic pain, migraine, gut issues, or immune dysregulation, there's a plausible mechanistic
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reasoning plus anecdotal reports supporting that nightshades may contribute. So testing and
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personalized approach are key. Now let's turn east for a minute. In traditional Chinese medicine,
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nightshades are not treated as one single family, the way they are in Western botany. Tomatoes,
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potatoes, eggplants, chili, peppers may all belong to the Solanaceae plant family,
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yet traditional Chinese medicine classifies them not by genetics, but by their energetic effects
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on the body. What unites them biologically does not necessarily unite them therapeutically.
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I'll repeat that, it's important. What unites them biologically does not necessarily unite
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them therapeutically. Each has its own temperature, taste, and influence on different organs and
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meridians, and therefore its own potential to heal or harm depending on the person's internal balance.
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And so traditional Chinese medicine is going to look at the food through many dimensions.
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Is it thermal value? Is it hot, warm, neutral, cool, or cold? Its tastes, its properties, its channel
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tropism, and its contraindications for specific constitutions. And so at Migrant Heroes, we're
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going to work literally with 790 foods and food combinations that we strictly add to restore
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internal balance. And so we try to explain that variety and approach, and you can discover that on MigrantHeroes.com.
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And so although nightshades are not a unified category in traditional Chinese
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medicine, many of them share tendencies that can aggravate different underlying patterns that make
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migraine flare, and that is why I think they are spoken about as a category of negative foods when
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it comes to migraines. But actually, in my view, in our view, not for the same reasons, and not for the
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same people, and that joins what the West says. So let's go through them one by one, so that for you
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in your home, you can get a sense of that may help or hinder you. Let's start with the tomatoes.
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Tomatoes are cooling and slightly sour, and while they can clear heat, so think of heat like
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inflammation, and nourish fluids, think of, you know, some of us sometimes being dry at times,
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their cold nature can weaken your spleen yang, and so your digestive power, and create internal
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dampness when eaten often or raw. And so this damp obstruction is going to slow the upward flow
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of clear yang to the head, leading to heaviness, fogginess, or migraines after meal. So to say
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things in a simple way, if you have migraines on the forehead, or if you have a tendency to
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overthink, or if you have ADHD coupled with your migraines, tomatoes are not your best friend. It
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doesn't mean it's going to trigger instantly a migraine, but it does mean that it's going to
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make something that is weak, weaker. Then we have the potatoes. Potatoes are naturally neutral, but they
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become damp forming when they're fried or eaten cold, and this dampness is going to accumulate
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in what is called the middle burner, dulling digestion, and creating pressure sensation that
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can cause migraine when the weather changes, in particular migraines when the barometric pressure
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changes. And so they will also tend to accentuate fogginess and lengthen migraine hangovers and cloud
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your mind. Then we have the eggplants. They're distinctly cold and slightly bitter. They can
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congeal chi and blood when they're overused, especially in people already prone to cold and
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blood volume deficiency. I have to confess, eggplants are one of my favorites and completely
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off for my constitution. And so the result may be headaches that feel a bit deeper, heavier,
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and all over the head, stronger for people who have, for example, sugar cravings. Sugar cravings
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when tired, when not having about to have your menstruation, when stressed. Then we have chili
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and bell peppers. And those on the other hand are warming and they're dispersing. See, completely
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different, still part of the nightshade family, but completely different to the eggplants that
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were cold. And they stimulate circulation and they can open block channels in moderation. But in
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excess, they're going to scatter the liver chi and create internal heat, internal inflammation. They're
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going to exacerbate inflammation. And so for sensitive individuals, the sudden rise of yang
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to the head can manifest as throbbing, red face migraines, temple migraines, top of the head
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migraines, restlessness, PMS migraines, insomnia. And so don't hesitate to listen again to the last
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few minutes of the episode to see which of the nightshades might make you react more and soften
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your use of it. It is the overexposure that can be very negative and reinforce an imbalance already
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present. And in many ways, migraine is a journey, a massive journey. It's about listening to your
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body with curiosity instead of judgment, trying one thing at a time and noticing how it helps or
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hinders your balance. And remember, every small step you take moves you closer to freedom.
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You are powerful, you are resilient, and you are no longer alone. Keep rising, Migraine Hero.
