Life Changing Revelation

Hello all, this is my first time posting online about my migraine experiences. I basically wanted to share something that has quite literally changed my life and I’m hoping it can make a difference to others too. But first a little background on me... I’m a 36 year old male carer for adults with learning disabilities and I’ve had aura migraines since the age of 13. So 23 years trying to figure out my own migraines. In my teens I was plagued with them, having several every single week. Over the years I’ve learned about my own triggers such as food, lifestyle etc and I’m very strict nowadays.

I found over the years my own particular triggers to mainly be; cheese, choc, oranges, citrus, apple juice, E numbers, fizzy juice, stress, worry, lack of food, dehydration, doing too much, long periods of time in front of screen, fluorescent strip lighting, long morning lie ins, lack of sleep or too much sleep.

I have made some changes over the years including drinking up to two litres of water each day which alone has had a colossal impact but this is not what I was referring to that has changed my life...

I had some (unrelated) tests done 3 years ago and I was told my body didn’t react too well to Fluoride. I thought, ok, so I started using fluoride-free toothpaste. Thankfully where I live the water isn’t fluoridated. Over the next two years I only had maybe one or two migraines - I just thought maybe I was outgrowing them or something. At that point after two years one day I ran out of my toothpaste and, not thinking much of it, I thought I would just use my wife’s Colgate until my own toothpaste arrived, as I had to order online. In the 7 days I was using the Colgate (Fluoride) toothpaste twice daily I had 5 aura migraines!! Still I didn’t make the connection until it dawned on me the only change I had made around that time was the toothpaste. I googled it and there is a, not commonly known, link between fluoride and migraines. Never before have I had such a lightbulb moment. I went back on fluoride-free toothpaste and I didn’t have another migraine until just last week when I went to the dentist and had a scale and polish where they used, unbeknown to me until they applied it, a fluoride paste - I felt off the rest of that day and had a migraine the next!

I’m not claiming if you stop using fluoride toothpaste then it will simply result in no more migraines. For me though it’s too much to be a coincidence, as I always say to people migraine triggers are like a pyramid of cups, the more cups (triggers) you can eliminate the less chance of them crashing down. I also believe triggers are what I call ‘contributory factors’. One trigger may not ‘set off’ a migraine immediately as such but collectively with other triggers it may just result in a migraine so we have to eliminate as many as we can to give ourselves a fighting chance.

I know I will still get migraines as once a migraine sufferer always a migraine sufferer. But having gone from several a week to just a few every few years has been life changing for me. The way I feel each day has also changed since not using Fluoride - I used to live each day almost ‘expecting’ a migraine, allowing them to rule my life and I always had that ‘off’ feeling (we all know and hate) in the lead up to the migraine, or the after effect of the migraine. Nowadays, dare I say I feel largely normal day-to-day for the first time in my adult life.