Probiotic = Severe headpain/migraine?

bertiedog

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Has anybody else suffered with a severe migraine (or headpain if not migraine sufferer) the day after taking a probiotic? It would appear to have happened to me every time I have taken one capsule of Garden of Life Raw Colon probiotic, the strength is 50 billion CFU.

Last week I had killer migraines daily from Wednesday through to Sunday and didn't really understand why. I was taking Cephalaxin for a UTI so I thought originally it was due to this but anyway I stopped taking the Cephalexin from Friday and the probiotic from Saturday evening. I didn't have another one until last night and the migraines stopped and I gradually felt much better.

I hadn't realised about the probiotic causing the migraines so last evening around 6 pm I took another one but started getting headpain around 10 pm and today it has gone the way of last week and has developed into a very painful migraine that won''t go away and doesn't respond to usual painkillers.

Just wondered how common this might be amongst ME sufferers and puts me off taking a probiotic.

Pam
 

ljimbo423

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Just wondered how common this might be amongst ME sufferers and puts me off taking a probiotic.
Hi Pam-

I rarely get migraines but I get mild headaches often. When I take a large dose of almost anything that changes my gut microbiome, I usually get a headache.

If I took a capsule of 50 billion cfu probiotics, I would most certainly have a really bad headache. When I increase my dose of probiotics I usually don't increase it more than 5 billion cfu at a time. Usually at 3 day intervals.
 

bertiedog

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Thanks for that @ljimbo423, it seems way too much of a coincidence that on the 5 occasions I have taken that probiotic, the next day I have had a really horrendous migraine. It has almost gone now but that is around 33 hours since I last took it. My I BS was terrible too btw.

Having Googled it, one suggestion was that any fermented product can cause a high number of amines in the body/brain and I know for a fact that I have several genetic SNPs that would stop the enzymes that degrade many of those amines meaning I would have a higher than normal level thereby causing migraines in a susceptible individual like me.

I suppose what I have to take from this is I will give all probiotics a break for a while but I will still have small amounts of yoghurt that I make from organic soya milk and Alpro which doesn't seem to cause me any issues.

Pam