If you regularly experience any of the symptoms I list in this article, it is entirely possible that, like me, your migraines may be triggered by something in your diet. This is not medical advice, I am not a Medical Professional, do not take medical advice from internet strangers. If you are suffering from similar symptoms, consider approaching a medical professional before biohacking your life. This was my journey, I hope it brings relief to others.

Table of Contents Link to heading

• Introduction
  • Medical Dead End - ChatGPT to the rescue!
  • Why paper diaries failed (for me)
  • Biohacking My Diet
• Building a data driven health tracker
• Starting the Analysis of the collected data
  • Understanding The Pattern of my Symptoms
• In the beginning there was the “Elimination Diet”
  • % of Population Allergic to:
    • Gluten
    • Dairy
    • Pretty much hypoallergenic
    • High-risk allergenic foods (that I chose to add to my elimination diet initially, yes, no need to point out that I’m a dumbass)
  • My Symptom Checklist
  • Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!
  • The ‘Aha!!’ Moment: Ingredients, not Foods
• Discovering My Triggers
  • Symptom Similarities in trigger foods
    • Symptom similarities across common ingredients in food
• Elimination Salvation
  • Dairy
  • Gluten and Wheat
  • Celery
• Home Assistant Cured my Migraines
• The Reality of Living With Food Intolerances
  • Wheat derivatives are everywhere:
• CURED!!
  • Let’s call it what it is, food allergies
• The final outcome
  • Eating out with Food Allergies
  • Food allergies are rarely taken seriously.
  • “Prepared in a facility that also handles ….” does not mean it is allergen free.
  • Get Tested?
  • Taking Control
• Conclusion
• Stranger Danger

Introduction Link to heading

I used to suffer from migraines, amongst multiple less severe but nonetheless annoying symptoms.

Practically every single day, for the last 15 years, I’ve woken up with a migraine and gone to bed with one. It started 15 years ago at a friend’s wedding. The evening before we’re sharing a beer (Budweiser) chatting about the upcoming wedding, we go to bed, then at 3am in the morning I’m woken by the worst headache I’ve ever experienced. That headache lasted a week and was devastating, I cannot remember a single detail from that week, not the wedding, how I got home from Devon to Hampshire after the wedding, none of the calls from work asking where I was, it’s a blank.

For 15 years I suffered these migraines, along with multiple less severe but nonetheless debilitating and annoying symptoms. More recently the severity of the other symptoms has been getting noticeably worse. I was getting desperate, the impact on my sleep, my entire life was huge, I withdrew, I suffered in silence and had reached my breaking point.

Read more about my journey here

• Part 1 - No More Migraines, what I stopped eating
• Part 2 - Using Home Assistant to Track Symptoms & Cure Migraines
• Part 3 - Visualising the data for Food and Migraines
• A Visualisation of My Migraines and Food / Ingredients Consumed

Medical Dead End - ChatGPT to the rescue! Link to heading

Many visits to doctors followed this; MRI scans, blood tests, medications (Sumatriptan, Naproxen, Diclofenac, Fun painkillers that had no effect apart from making me a bit high for an hour or two) and of course many, many migraines. I had tried using Chatgpt to try to understand what was happening to me and help diagnose the problem. Amongst the wide range of incorrect suggestions offered by ChatGPT (Cancer, Cancer, IBS, Crohns, Cancer, Auto Brewery Syndrome, Hyperglycaemia, Hypoglycaemia, stress), was the golden goose of a suggestion:

ChatGPT : "Why don't you keep a diary of symptoms and see if anything stands out?"

ME : "Good point, why don't I?"

ChatGPT : ".....?"

Why paper diaries failed (for me) Link to heading

I have to admit this was not a new suggestion, I’d attempted this before, but me and paper diaries do not get along:

• Can’t find a pen then forget to record something
• Left the diary at home when out then forget to record something
• headache too bad to concentrate and write down what was eaten then forget to update the diary later etc.

Leading to many many missed entries and an incomplete dataset.

This led me to use my Home Assistant setup to record the information I needed in order to confirm, or not, that my diet was a factor in my migraine journey.

A secondary reason for using Home Assistant was that I needed a clean and consistent machine readable data set that would allow me to flex my Data Analysis skills with python, pandas, visualisations and machine learning models to see if a predictive model or some way of visualising the data could give me some answers or insights, and an incomplete, handwritten dataset is not going to cut it.

I built a Home Assistant dashboard to make recording food quick and simple, giving me a consistent data set to work with. When completed all it took was a couple of click/taps per meal or miserable start to the day to record everything I needed for future analysis.

The third reason is quite simple, I’m a hardcore nerd. So I developed a dashboard for Home Assistant to simplify collecting data, allowing me to answer the question “Is my food making me ill?”.

The Home Assistant dashboard allowed me to collect consistent, clean data in order to further analyse it using a Machine Learning Model or Visualisations.

Biohacking My Diet Link to heading

However, what I found was that having access to a very detailed food and symptom tracker actually made it pretty simple to see the problem foods directly in the data without going to the lengths of building a machine learning model or crafting a creative visualisation. Just sorting the data in Libre Office (Other spreadsheets exist I believe) yielded surprising insights before I even got to play with machine learning models and visualisations, leading to the beginning of my journey to a migraine free life.

I did end up developing the visualisation that demonstrates the improvement in migraine frequency along with suspect triggers and food eaten. It serves as a helpful reinforcement too to be extra careful about what I eat.

Update - Visualisation http://rodders.me/health_data_tracker_visualisation/vertical_food_timeline.html

Building a data driven health tracker Link to heading

Over the past seven months that I’ve been using Home Assistant to log the data:

• Date
• Time
• Categories (Food, Symptom, Migraine etc.)
• Additional Information (Detailed food info etc.)

I’ve collected over 12,000 rows of data which is more than enough to use as a dataset for a predictive model and expect some reasonable results. What also helps is now knowing my what my triggers are, I’ll be able to compare it to the output from the ML Model. About 80% of this data was readings from a CGM, which were later discounted as irrelevant to my migraines, this was one of ChatGPT’s erroneous suggestions.

I’ll get the elephant in the room out now, the machine learning models yielded poor data. The cumulative effect of suspect foods on my symptoms leads to very inconsistent data and ML models don’t play well with this type of time series but disjointed data. The cumulative effect of foods is explained alter in this article series.

Starting the Analysis of the collected data Link to heading

I started reviewing the collected data daily, nothing complex, just looking back at what I ate in previous days along with key symptoms, and before I even started developing the planned machine learning model and visualisations, obvious correlations for potentially problematic foods started to become more visible.

Understanding The Pattern of my Symptoms Link to heading

When I first approached this I was expecting to find a simple binary relationship:

If this was the case, I am sure I would have diagnosed this a long time ago. At first, as I collected and reviewed more data, the connections between food and symptoms were showing a non binary relationship,

Rather, the relationship between foods/ingredients was turning out to be a bit more complicated than first expected

So, sometimes, eating c,d,f = migraine doesn’t begin to cover the duration and breadth of the symptoms which could last for up to a week after the whole set of symptoms had been triggered. I ultimately called this “the ‘cascade’ effect of my allergic response”. I could eat a food with an ingredient of wheat/gluten some days and not appear to have any symptoms (Although it is more likely I was discounting the initial stages of symptoms, when compared to full blown symptoms, as irrelevant), but if I ate another trigger food the following day I start to feel the beginnings of a migraine within a few hours.

It took some months to figure out that my allergic response was cumulative. Eat a bit of celery one day, no immediate symptoms, eat a frozen burger (Wheat/Gluten) the following day I might be a bit snuffly with a barely registering headache, eat another trigger the following day and full blown symptoms started. Then not eating a trigger once the migraine started, I’d still have symptoms, because symptoms last up to a week.

In the beginning there was the “Elimination Diet” Link to heading

To get the ball rolling on the whole “Let’s cure migraines” Gravy Train (Gluten Free of Course), I had to eliminate absolutely everything from my diet that could possibly be affecting me, so basically everything I consumed at the time. Reducing my diet down to the bare essentials chicken, carrot, celery (yeah, I know, I missed that one), Capsicums (another one I shot myself in the foot with) gave me a boring, consistent diet that most importantly reduced the severity of, or entirely eliminated, my migraines (and other symptoms).

I mentioned earlier that celery was a problem in my diet for some time until I eliminated it. If I had done additional research on elimination diets I would have found this information, which would have been super helpful if I thought of it at the time:

% of Population Allergic to: Link to heading

Gluten Link to heading

Dairy Link to heading

Pretty much hypoallergenic Link to heading

High-risk allergenic foods (that I chose to add to my elimination diet initially, yes, no need to point out that I’m a dumbass) Link to heading

My Symptom Checklist Link to heading

The migraine was my main focus while I was on this journey, but I would suffer all or some of these symptoms, alongside the migraine, every single time I triggered a migraine, the symptoms lasting anything up to a week.

Later in the entire process, during some research where I started cross referencing my symptoms with known symptoms for food allergies, the connection became obvious. All of these symptom link to a food allergy of some sort.

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong! Link to heading

Misunderstanding my symptoms and triggers in the early phases of the discovery phase led to me incorrectly excluding suspect foods. For quite a while I hadn’t realised that Celery was a trigger. Dropping Gluten/Wheat from my diet showed an immediate and significant improvement in frequency and intensity of my migraines a few days later. But I was still waking some mornings with a less intense migraine. This led to me mis-categorising many foods before I started connecting celery to my symptoms. Once Celery was on my radar, progress became swift: connecting the dots between ingredients and my cumulative allergic/intolerance response and I began the process to begin eliminating and testing those suspect ingredients.

The first step was eliminating any suspect foods for at least a week until I became symptom free. The first time I finally woke one morning not in pain, I cried happy / relief tears, I was onto something, something I controlled, and I could see a potential future without a daily migraine.

After a symptom free week I’d ’test’ a food, adding it to my diet for 3-4 days and recording any migraines and symptoms.

The ‘Aha!!’ Moment: Ingredients, not Foods Link to heading

Over the following months I refined my understanding of my chaotic symptoms and adjusted my analysis from foods to ingredients. Where I had suspected Bread as a food, now became the ingredients wheat/gluten and any foods containing that ingredient were eliminated. I cook a lot of Asian food, many asian sauces are derived from wheat : Soy, Black Bean, Szechuan Chili Bean, Oyster Sauce. My lazy foods were pork burgers and beef burgers, guess what they contain ? Yeah Wheat. Spice mixes? Wheat, Gluten Free Hob Knob Biscuits? yeah, dairy. I am sure you get the picture, as these problematic ingredients were eliminated I started to see more days without a migraine than with a migraine.

This led me to begin putting a visualisation together that could perhaps better demonstrate the relationship between ingredients and my symptoms.

Discovering My Triggers Link to heading

Symptom Similarities in trigger foods Link to heading

With a little cross referencing, and the benefit of hindsight, I began to see the similarities in symptoms between all of my main Allergic / Intolerant Foods with the obvious standout being “Headache” across all of them. What isn’t noted in any of the articles I read is the severity and duration of the headaches. The web sites I read just call it a headache, not once did any articles state the severity: “Headache, that will last for days, make you feel like shit and hate living”.

Symptom similarities across common ingredients in food Link to heading

Elimination Salvation Link to heading

Replacing traditional Bread, Pasta and Noodles with gluten free alternatives kept the migraines away which had the most immediate positive impact, but I was still getting symptoms, despite removing gluten from my diet which then led to me concluding I should eliminate any food products that have wheat.

Eliminating all wheat containing foods from my diet demonstrated clear correlation, 72 hours later, the migraine has diminished or gone entirely. 48 hours later and a host of secondary symptoms are in decline, after a week I felt normal for the first time in years. After a week symptom free, I also realised that my entire body swells up a little bit (Bloat) after eating wheat containing products; rings on fingers become tighter and harder to remove when consuming allergens, after a week without gluten, my rings are slipping off my fingers, I’ll probably need some rings resizing.

Dairy Link to heading

The first food to standout in the dataset was Milk or more specifically dairy. I tested Milk, butter, cheese (sob) and Whey Protein. I eventually reached the conclusion that I cannot consume any amount of these ingredients without triggering symptoms.

So that’s one trigger : Dairy, I am Lactose Intolerant, Casein Intolerant and Whey Protein Intolerant. For some reason, I can drink lactose free milk even though it has casein in it, thankfully. Pure Whey Protein is a thermonuclear bomb of migraine and feeling like shit for me.

First identified during the dietary elimination phase when I ate some ice-cream, introduced a protein supplement to my diet and tried some yummy cheese. They all had a huge negative impact on my fatigue levels, migraines, sleep etc. I’d previously never realised how quickly symptoms started showing after consuming tiny amounts of these potential allergens. Eliminating them from my diet was an education in how bad certain foods are for me.

So dairy is off the diet for ever, it affects sleep, contributes to mild to bad migraines and a list of secondary symptoms too unpleasant and irritating to detail here.

Gluten and Wheat Link to heading

The next discovery had me swearing, a lot : Bread, Pasta, Snacks, crisps etc.

Yeah the stuff I eat practically every single day, this had the largest correlation to the worst migraines and drew the loudest and most incredulous

“You have to be Fking kidding me” Link to heading

response from me.

“I’m Gluten/Wheat Intolerant/allergic ???” Link to heading

This is also known as NCGS Non Coeliac Gluten Sensitivity when I first read the list of symptoms for this it was surreal “Oh FFS” moment for me asI started to see correlations between my symptoms and the symptoms for NCGS.

I found eliminating Wheat/Gluten difficult to stomach and just as hard to eat … gluten free alternatives are …. different, texture is different, how it tastes is different, how it works when cooked is different. I got used to Gluten Free alternative baked items through a process of trial, error and toasting everything. I’ll admit it was hard at first, but over time I’ve found alternatives that work, I got used to, or just eliminated the item from my diet.

Celery Link to heading

After eliminating dairy and gluten/wheat …. things improved in a significant and measurable way, full blown migraines and secondary symptoms have practically disappeared, however, I was still waking some mornings with what I’ll call a low grade headache. This started a secondary elimination cycle, this time identifying celery as a mild allergen.

Home Assistant Cured my Migraines Link to heading

OK, perhaps a more accurate title would be “Home Assistant helped my on my journey to cure my migraines!”. Today, and I’m not kidding, thanks to Home Assistant enabling me to capture supremely detailed and consistent information on my diet and symptoms, I cured my migraines by eliminating trigger ingredients from my diet.

But the journey isn’t over.

The Reality of Living With Food Intolerances Link to heading

I also began to realise that consuming a tiny amount of wheat or dairy means I’m pretty much fkd for a week. What made it even worse was having to read the labels on any sort of processed food I bought and realising that everything seems to have wheat in it, or a derivative of wheat and the ingredients are printed in really small fonts!

Soy Sauce ? Wheat, Vinegar? Wheat, Frozen Burgers? Wheat, Seasoning Spice Mixes? Wheat, Sausages? Wheat, Crisps and Snacky stuff ? Wheat, Pasta? Wheat, Noodles? Wheat, Biscuits and Sweet Snacks? You got it, Wheat, even oven chips all seem to be coated with wheat now.

Wheat derivatives are everywhere: Link to heading

CURED!! Link to heading

After eliminating Dairy, Gluten/Wheat and Celery from my diet, I now wake every morning migraine and symptom free after a solid 8 hours uninterrupted sleep. I still maintain the food and symptom tracker, it’s a good habit to keep when my allergies also seem to be developing, I’m pretty sure I never used to be allergic to celery, so it’s a new one.

Let’s call it what it is, food allergies Link to heading

Since the dots have been connected, corrective action taken, quality of life improvements revelled in, a final element was added, taking a daily prophylactic antihistamine. It appears to reduce the severity of symptoms I’d suffer if I am testing suspect foods or accidentally eat a trigger. This suggests my symptoms may be histamine related and at some point might we worth investigating further.

The final outcome Link to heading

I got fat! I put on ~8Kg in weight rather rapidly after the first 2 weeks of ingredient elimination and converting to gluten free alternatives for bread, pasta and noodles. I’m working on this! I suspect, that my gluten intolerance is responsible for this as NCGS can mess up the gut a lot, and now I am not bloated and swollen, my tubes are working properly. Suffice to say, I’m on a diet!

All trigger foods/ingredients have been eliminated from my diet.

I wake each day without a migraine, unless I am testing.

Daily food and symptom logging continues, I suspect my allergies are developing, currently the capsicum family is sitting on the suspect list as well meaning no chillis or bell peppers!

I eat a much healthier diet: lots of fibre, managed levels of carbs, measured proteins, loads of unsaturated fats.

I rarely eat out, the few times I have, I’ve suffered, despite declaring allergies which doesn’t seem prevent accidental cross contamination.

My diet is more controlled and managed, meals are planned and prepared and cooked fresh.

For shitty days where I have accidentally glutened, dairyed or celeryed myself, I have a stack of sauces in the freezer I’ve made that can be quickly turned into a stir fry or soup.

I’m borderline obsessive about checking ingredients in the tiny amount of processed food I now eat.

And, yeah, I now realise I’m highly allergic to common foods! FML eh? Fifteen bloody years, more visits to doctors and hospitals than I can remember, and it was food all along!

Eating out with Food Allergies Link to heading

I have realised through bad experience that restaurant foods that are declared gluten/wheat or other allergens free, can still have enough of the allergen from cross contamination to cause me significant problems and the few instances I have eaten out have left me feeling bloody awful, so I don’t really eat out much.

On the plus side, I’m becoming an awesome chef!

Food allergies are rarely taken seriously. Link to heading

I’ve seen the rolled eyes from servers, the scepticism from friends, it’s frustrating because “Gluten Free woo!” is a health fad for many, for me it’s a serious condition that has a significant negative impact on my health and well-being and now, being symptom free, I get anxious eating anything I haven’t prepared myself.

“Prepared in a facility that also handles ….” does not mean it is allergen free. Link to heading

Again a lesson learned the hard way. I accept that unless a kitchen / facility is dedicated to allergen free food prep, cross contamination is a very real and common problem and expecting every restaurant to REALLY make an effort to ensure no cross contamination is unrealistic. Expecting factory processed foods that contain no gluten/dairy/celery and do not declare the product as allergen free is also a recipe for disaster for me.

A good example of this is a favourite snack of mine Poppadums, made with lentil flour, absolutely no gluten or other allergens, but made in a facility that handles wheat flour and you’ve guessed it, I can’t eat them.

Get Tested? Link to heading

Now, knowing what I know, shouldn’t I get tested ?

In order for testing to be effective I have to be consuming the allergen for at least four weeks before the allergen or DNA testing. However, now I am symptom free, the thought of going back to consuming these foods and suffering the pain and misery it will induce, just to get tested in order to confirm something I already know, simply does not appear to be worth it to me.

Taking Control Link to heading

I set out to investigate my migraine triggers by using Home Assistant to record diet and symptoms in order to identify triggers. I wanted to get a clearer picture of what was happening to me every day. But over time, as the data built up and patterns began to emerge, I started to feel less like I was at the mercy of random symptoms and more like I had something I had control of.

Tracking everything in one place — food, sleep, migraines, ingredients let me spot correlations I’d never have otherwise noticed.

Visualising it helped make it real. It helped me adjust my habits, diet, confirm what was working, and slowly piece together a version of daily life where I wasn’t constantly firefighting unexplained migraines.

This approach didn’t magically “cure” anything, but it gave me clarity. And in the mess of trial and error that is managing chronic symptoms, that clarity has been worth everything.

I still log food, it takes a moment to do so using Home Assistant, as I suspect my allergies are still developing, we’ll see.

Conclusion Link to heading

After 15 years, through the ever-so-simple process of adopting a elimination diet, recording everything I ate and how I felt, testing and eliminating trigger foods, I am migraine free, apart from days I test foods. Ignoring recent tests and eating out (not having a lot of luck here, 3 x times eating out, 3 x migraines), I’ve been migraine and symptom free for the last 3 weeks (July 2025 at the time of writing).

Stranger Danger Link to heading

I am not a doctor, this is not medical advice, stranger danger!. Everyone is different, I think my experience might be a possible avenue for the daily migraine sufferers to pursue. The once-in-a-while “kill me” migraine sufferers are probably needing something else.

I’m guessing, wtf do I know? This is what worked for me, if you’re at your breaking point, consider giving this a try?

And there endeth the lesson / journey, may your allergies be insignificant and your diet varied and healthy.

“Live Long and May the Force be With You. Link to heading

Read more about my journey here

• Part 1 - No More Migraines, what I stopped eating
• Part 2 - Using Home Assistant to Track Symptoms & Cure Migraines
• Part 3 - Visualising the data for Food and Migraines
• A Visualisation of My Migraines and Food / Ingredients Consumed