Monday, August 20, 2007

Running Around the House, and Having a Migraine at the Same Time

Often it was hard to believe that our son was experiencing a migraine. One moment he would be crying out in pain, irritable, and even oppositional; and the next moment, he would be running around the house playing. He did not look like he was experiencing a migraine, but he was. I learned from my son's neurologist that sometimes children experience migraines that do not last more than a few minutes. In my son's case, he was still having a migraine, but the pain he was experiencing had decreased to a tolerable level or his attention was so focused on something else that he didn't sense the pain.

Saturday, August 4, 2007

MSG and Hidden Sources

One day my son placed a juice box on the kitchen counter and exclaimed that the juice gave him a headache. This spurred me to investigate which ingredient could be the cause. I found an interesting list of ingredients, which contained enough MSG to cause a reaction in certain people. It turned out that the juice contained natural flavors, which often contain MSG. After this discovery, I switched to real apple or grape juice because these juices did not contain ingredients that affected my son.

If you are interested in a list of potential sources of MSG, check out this web site http://www.holisticmed.com/msg/msg-sources.txt