Role of Allergy in Headache

June 3rd, 2010

WILLIAM B. SHERMAN, M.D. THE ROLE OF ALLERGY, chiefly of allergy to foods, in the causation of headaches has been repeatedly described in the medical writings of the past forty years. Most of the earliest reports were by French physicians. Lesné and Richet,7 whose article on the subject was printed in 1913, are usually thought of to have been the primary to relate migraine to sensitization to specific foods. Pagniez, Vallery-Radot, and Nast9 in 1919 reported further cases and notably mentioned chocolate as a potential causative agent, establishing a suspicion in regard to the present food that remains widely held. Toronto Chiropractor suggest adjustments in lifestyle that affect these factors. Vaughan was active in introducing the concept of allergic headache to Yankee physicians. In 1927, he reported a series of thirty-three patients with migraine of whom twelve were successfully treated by allergic management.10 In subsequent writings he additional developed the read that allergy was an vital cause in a very majority of cases of migraine, relief following the elimination of specific foods from the diet more typically than any other type of regimen.18 He was supported in this idea by Balyeat,1 Rowe,12 Rinkel,10 Unger,fifteen and others, who reported excellent results from the applying of allergic ways to treatment of migraine.

Normally these authors recognized fatigue, stress, and endocrine factors like menstruation as vital contributory factors, however thought of that migraine was basically a disease of sensitization and that the allergic approach was the principal factor in successful management. Eyermann5 realized that several headaches resulting from allergic sensitization did not have the everyday features of migraine. While not denying the role of food allergy in the causation of true migraine, he applied the term “allergic headache” to conditions that differed in numerous respects from the classical picture of migraine, however were controlled by allergic management. Chiropractor Toronto discovered that a few third believed there was no scientific proof that immunization prevents disease. Most of those patients did not have a family history of headaches; the pain was variable in location, typically bilateral, and the attack wasn’t ordinarily in the midst of prodromata, nausea or vomiting.

In this classification of allergic headache he included not only headaches believed to result from intracranial hypersensitivity, typically to foods, however additionally those in that pain resulted from allergic edema of the nasal mucosa and paranasal sinuses, that may be caused by pollens and other inhaled allergens with foods. Most subsequent writers have recognized the latter cluster, however, as a result of of the presumably completely different pathologic reaction, have separated it from the headaches of intracranial origin. Another distinct type of headache that has been attributed to food allergy is histamine cephalalgia. In the initial description by Horton,half dozen the reason for this type of headache was thought of uncertain. However, MacNeal, Alpers, and O’Brien8 contemplate allergy the predominant factor in the causation of the headaches they embody during this group.

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