Allergy doesn’t always look like allergy — and allergy symptoms can manifest in many different ways. Some experience itchy throat and runny nose. Others know their allergies are peaking when they experience headaches or migraines, and some find that headaches are their only allergy symptom.

Though a definitive cause of migraines isn’t totally clear, clinical evidence and research has shown a connection between migraines, headaches, and allergies. Foods, environmental factors and irritants can all be headache triggers.

Foods

Three percent of people with migraines consider a problem food, or foods, to be the cause. Dr. Demetrios Theodoropoulos, allergist at Allergy Associates of La Crosse, has seen and researched a link between food allergies and migraines.

When patients present with headaches or migraines, he looks deep into their history, daily exposures, and then determines which food allergies are present with allergy testing. He puts the puzzle pieces together and creates a treatment plan, including allergy drops for their food allergies.

Dr. Theodoropoulos has seen patients with food allergies experience a decrease in migraine days after treating the cause of their food allergies with allergy drops. In his patient population and research, this is especially apparent in patients with wheat allergy. Patients studied with wheat allergy experiencing 12-15 migraines a month have seen their migraine days drop drastically to one migraine every two or three months.

The environment

Environmental allergies can also bring on headaches or migraines. Environmental headache triggers can be indoor or outdoor and include tree, grass, or weed pollens, pet dander, and mold.

When your body is exposed to an environmental allergen, one reaction is for the sinuses to fill with mucus. Typically, sinuses drain through your nose, but the sinus cavity can become blocked because of allergy causing fluid and pressure to build. This causes sinus pressure, facial pain, and headaches.

The added inflammation in your sinuses after exposure to your problem allergens can cause headaches. Sometimes these allergy-triggered headaches are accompanied by itchy watery eyes, sneezing or runny nose.

Irritants

Those with allergies are more likely to be bothered by irritants like gasoline, perfumes, and cigarette smoke. We can thank the Total Allergen Load for that.

The Total Allergen Load explains that there are many contributing factors that can have an effect on a person’s health: food allergies, environmental allergies, hormones, nutrition, chemical irritants and more. Any one of these factors can add “water to the allergy bucket,”  and too many factors can make it overflow. That overflow can cause an allergic reaction.

For some, inhaling cigarette smoke during their peak allergy season can cause the allergy bucket to overflow, leading to headaches or migraines. Managing other factors, like underlying allergies or eliminating exposures, can help to reduce these headaches.

The bottom line for these headache and migraine cases is that managing the underlying allergy may help to eliminate painful days. Allergy drops following the La Crosse Method^™ Protocol can achieve this safely and effectively by slowly introducing your body to your specific offending food and environmental allergies and helping you build long-term tolerance. Lowering the Total Allergen Load can not only reduce migraines, it can reduce related conditions like asthma, eczema, and sinusitis.

Providers across the country are using the La Crosse Method to treat their patients’ allergic conditions. Find a provider near you offering custom allergy drops.

By Taylor Pasell, Allergychoices