112 Achieving pH Balance to Treat Specific Ailments
like pattern from the corner of his right eye. It gave him migraine
headaches.
By the time Chris parked his car in the driveway and walked through
the door of his house, he was seeing neon-lit circles, stars, and stripes.
Fifteen minutes later the throbbing, painful ache on the left side of his
head began, and on the same side of his body his muscles became para-
lyzed. A half hour later he couldn’t see and had trouble talking. It was
two hours before his migraine symptoms began to subside.
Then Chris changed jobs. He was able to take a bus to and from
work, so on his way home, he could avoid the rotating bands of light
and shadow by closing his eyes. But while Chris no longer had fi ve
migraines a week, the few he did have were far more severe. This told
him that the strobe-light effect simply switched on symptoms that were
caused by something else.
Doing some research into migraines, Chris unearthed the informa-
tion that milk, citrus fruit, chocolate, alcohol, coffee, and cheese were
the most frequent causes of chronic headaches. Cheese was the only one
of these foods that Chris ate in appreciable quantities. He gave it up,
cut down on the number of cups of coffee he drank daily, and went on
the grain eater’s diet, which the niacin test indicated fi t his digestive
requirements. He is also having acupuncture treatments. He hasn’t had
a migraine in over a year and a half.
A migraine, which can last anywhere from four hours to two days,
occurs in two stages. In the fi rst stage the sufferer sees lightning-like
zigzags, wavy lines, and/or dark spots. This is caused by hyperactive
neurons in the visual center of the brain whose blood supply has been
cut off by the constriction of the blood vessels. In the second stage the
blood vessels covering the skull become enlarged and the head begins to
throb painfully. Speech, hearing, and muscle problems develop during
this stage.
There is no lack of theories as to why migraines develop, but none
have ever been proven and some have been disproven. There is an obvi-
ous explanation that accounts for both stages of migraine. That is the
presence of acidic waste in the fl uid surrounding the neurons in the
brain and in the blood vessels in the tissue covering the skull. The fact
that the blood vessels on the side of the head where the second stage of
migraines occur become enlarged and painful suggests the presence of
an irritant in the blood.