It’s a treasured home remedy for migraines: drink Gatorade when you feel a migraine coming on, and it’ll go away. However, is it really true? Can Gatorade truly cure a migraine?
Mechanisms for the Gatorade Cure
It’s quite possible that drinking Gatorade will help you get rid of many types of headaches, including migraines. The primary mechanism is probably just hydration. Dehydration is a common cause of headaches, especially during the summer. But many people are dehydrated year round, including the deep of winter when people are inside centrally heated buildings that are even more dry than Colorado’s normal air. So just restoring your body’s lost moisture could do wonders for your headache.
Another way that Gatorade might work to cure your headache is by supplying magnesium. Magnesium is a common remedy for migraines. It works for many people, and is one of the ways that people use food to treat their migraines. Other people recommend magnesium supplements to help prevent migraines.
Could Gatorade Cause Migraines?
However, there’s also a possible risk that Gatorade could actually cause migraines. Like many artificially flavored foods, Gatorade is suspected (but not proven) to contain MSG, which some people say is a migraine trigger, although there are doubts about that.
So it’s possible that people could experience migraines after drinking Gatorade. However, there are far more reports of people experiencing migraine relief from Gatorade than those developing migraines after drinking Gatorade.
When You Exhaust Home Remedies
There are many people who swear by home remedies, but in many cases there is little evidence for whether people are actually experiencing benefits from the placebo effect or some part of the home remedy ritual rather than from the supposed cure.
But if you’re not getting headache relief from home remedies, we can help. TMJ treatment has been proven to help many headache sufferers see reductions in the frequency and intensity of headaches. TMJ is linked with migraine as well as many other chronic overlapping pain conditions (COPCs). It is likely that calcitonin gene-related peptides (CGRP) link these conditions. While new medications can block CGRP, it might be better to tackle them at their source: the trigeminal nerve, which is also a key trigger point for migraines. The trigeminal nerve carries commands to the jaw muscles, and it carries pain signals back to the brain. When TMJ leads to overstimulation of the trigeminal nerve, it can set off migraines.
To learn more about our proven, drug-free migraine treatment, please call (303) 691-0267 for an appointment at the TMJ Therapy & Sleep Center of Colorado in Denver.
