Headaches And Constipation

[CGally81]

Just when I thought I was out of the woods, headaches began to show up in the past month or so and get worse. I realized that my peanut butter had hyrdogenated oil in it, which is terrible for you (it's trans fat, yet companies can legally say "0g trans fat" even if there's a lot in there), so I replaced it with a new brand that doesn't have it.

But every day for the past week or so, I'd get a nasty headache if I drank a lot of water or, heck, I just would get one sometimes. I'd sometimes feel somewhat warm in the head, but I'd feel like "light-headed", which would go away if I went to the bathroom. If I drank a lot of water, I'd be more likely to get it. The headaches tend to be far less frequent later at night.

The changes I made in the past few weeks were changing peanut butter brands, and taking fish oil every day. Fish oil is said to reduce these symptoms. I've yet to see the effect, but I do know it can take weeks or months.

What's causing this???? I hate these light-headed feelings and headaches. I hope it's not the fish oil. I also hope it's not the brand of peanut butter that's supposed to be healthier. I'd been having these problems before for the past few months, but not to this extent.

Here's my current diet. I'm not only gluten intolerant but casein intolerant, so I can't have dairy, not even yogurt.

- Smart Balance Peanut Butter (which I have for breakfast)

- fish oil (started taking for its health benefits, which I have yet to feel)

- chicken breasts

- bananas

- popcorn (no milk ingredients, no gluten, no "modified food starch")

- potatoes

- hamburger (patty only)

- brown rice

Yes, it's very limited. I really really hate this disease. Any help, anyone? What could be causing these headaches, and what gets rid of them?

Smart Balance Peanut Butter contains peanuts, evaporated cane juice, natural oil blend (palm fruit and flaxseed oils), salt and molasses. (I originally thought it had TBHQ, but instead, a brand that I avoided had it)

My previous brand, Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter contains Roasted Peanuts, Sugar, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils, Salt. It didn't seem to affect me nearly as badly. Could it be the oils in Smart Balance? The cane juice?

[txplowgirl]

I'm sorry to say that Smart Balance PB gives me headaches too.

[i-geek]

I'm a big fan of Whole Foods 365 peanut butter. Two ingredients: peanuts and salt. No added sugar or other oils.

Two other thoughts: one, are the fish oil capsules certified gluten-free? And two- with your very limited diet are you getting enough calories and nutrients? I get nasty headaches if I don't eat enough.

[CGally81]

I'm a big fan of Whole Foods 365 peanut butter. Two ingredients: peanuts and salt. No added sugar or other oils.

Two other thoughts: one, are the fish oil capsules certified gluten-free? And two- with your very limited diet are you getting enough calories and nutrients? I get nasty headaches if I don't eat enough.

The fish oil is in liquid form, and it's by Carlson's. I don't think gluten or milk would be in it. Is that confirmed to be the case?

As for calories and nutrients, I think so. I take the Pioneer Chewable Vitamins this site sells, and they're supposed to have a lot of nutrients to deal with the lack of nutrients caused by celiac. I don't think I have problems with lack of nutrients.

I might try that brand of peanut butter. Hope there's a Whole Foods near my area, but I think there is.

[CGally81]

I'm sorry to say that Smart Balance PB gives me headaches too.

You too? Same kind of headaches? Including light-headedness, and difficulty focusing sometimes? (It's hard to describe)

I looked at my food chart for this year (yup, I keep one big file on my desktop for the whole year), and noticed I started this brand of peanut butter on 7/22. I started the fish oil on 7/14. I might stop both, then reintroduce fish oil only and see if the problems resume, and if not, it's the PB.

[txplowgirl]

I have anything from sharp spikes to deep throbbing aches and yes lightheadedness as well as feeling like my eyes are bulging out or my eyes feeling like they are getting poked with pins. I haven't tried the fish oils so can't help you on that one.

[CGally81]

I have anything from sharp spikes to deep throbbing aches and yes lightheadedness as well as feeling like my eyes are bulging out or my eyes feeling like they are getting poked with pins. I haven't tried the fish oils so can't help you on that one.

Really? From that particular brand of peanut butter? Wow. They seemed to show up in this nasty form (I'd had occasional light-headedness and/or headaches before, but not nearly this bad or frequent) after I switched peanut butter brands.

What other foods gave you headaches? And you get no such headaches from Whole Foods 365?

Since I started the fish oil and peanut butter on different weeks, but only 8 days apart, it's still too early to tell if it's the fish oil or the PB that's doing it. But I remember mentioning these symptoms to my endocrinologist, who I saw on Friday, so they must have been going on for long enough to get my attention. I strongly suspect the PB.

But I am cutting both out temporarily. The fish oil gave me one period where I felt fantastic - utter joy and relaxation, after mowing the lawn. That was on one day where I had both the fish oil, but the third day I'd had the PB (after not having it at all during the weekend). I think the PB may have taken a little while - a few days rather than Day One - to really start messing me up. If it took a few days to get into my system, it might take a few days to get out, assuming it's the PB and not the fish oil that is the problem.

[txplowgirl]

I've never had the whole foods pb. But soy also gives me headaches. Squash, bananas, cucumbers, which I don't understand because I can eat pickles no problem.

[CGally81]

I've never had the whole foods pb. But soy also gives me headaches. Squash, bananas, cucumbers, which I don't understand because I can eat pickles no problem.

Do you get headaches from other brands of peanut butter? Is this particular brand worse than others?

[CGally81]

My head is kind of warm too. I'm somewhat tired. I don't know if I have a fever, but if so, what could be causing THAT? Constant exposure to whatever was causing my nasty headaches? (In those headaches, I seriously felt like I wasn't getting air to the brain or however you describe it. It's hard to describe, but maybe light-headed really is the best way to put it) I don't think such headaches could be a precursor to a fever. Fevers don't last that long.

[CGally81]

I'm wondering if it's a specific ingredient in this brand of peanut butter.

Smart Balance Peanut Butter contains:

- peanuts, evaporated cane juice, natural oil blend (palm fruit and flaxseed oils), salt and molasses.

My previous brand, Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter contains:

- Roasted Peanuts, Sugar, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils and Salt.

While hyrdogenated oils are terrible for you in the long term, apparently that particular brand didn't affect me anywhere near as badly as the previous brand. Do people get headaches from evaporated cane juice, or palm fruit or flaxseed oils? Or molasses? Or could it be the way the peanut butter was made somehow?

[jerseyangel]

I'm wondering if it's a specific ingredient in this brand of peanut butter.

Smart Balance Peanut Butter contains:

- peanuts, evaporated cane juice, natural oil blend (palm fruit and flaxseed oils), salt and molasses.

My previous brand, Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter contains:

- Roasted Peanuts, Sugar, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils and Salt.

While hyrdogenated oils are terrible for you in the long term, apparently that particular brand didn't affect me anywhere near as badly as the previous brand. Do people get headaches from evaporated cane juice, or palm fruit or flaxseed oils? Or molasses? Or could it be the way the peanut butter was made somehow?

This may be a stretch, but I will throw it out there because you never know what might ring a bell. I get migraine headaches, dizziness and nausea from coconut. Coconut is related in some way to palm.

[CGally81]

It might have been the evaporated cane juice. I looked up [evaporated sugar cane headache] on Google and found this:

"So what are the options - artificial sweeteners? Well, the problem there is that certain artificial sweeteners may be even worse for your health than white sugar. Some people attribute negative side effects such as headaches, poor concentration, and even conditions like Attention Deficit Disorder and auto-immune diseases to some of these products. Others have been shown in some animal studies to increase risk of illnesses like cancer."

(EDIT: It turns out that article was talking about artificial sweeteners in general, then promoting evaporated sugar cane as a healthy alternative)

Headaches and poor concentration indeed! You know what it feels like if you suck in a lot of air and hold your breath, how it travels to your brain and makes you feel light-headed? I'd been getting a lot of that in the past week! (I'd randomly get it, to a milder extent, in the weeks or months prior)

Anyone have that light-headed symptom? From PB or anything else?

[CGally81]

This may be a stretch, but I will throw it out there because you never know what might ring a bell. I get migraine headaches, dizziness and nausea from coconut. Coconut is related in some way to palm.

Palm juice originates from coconut? Hmm. Maybe I should try a peanut butter brand that has peanuts as its only ingredient.

First I'll wait for the headaches and light-headedness to go away, and be gone for a while. Then reintroduce fish oil (which shouldn't be causing the problem), then after a while, try another brand of peanut butter that's totally natural.

[jerseyangel]

I agree--elimination is the best way to figure these things out. I would definitely try a peanut-only peanut butter. Smuckers makes a good one.

[CGally81]

It probably isn't evaporated cane juice, because that's also in the brand of gluten-free casein-free chocolate chip cookies I sometimes treat myself to, and those don't hurt me at all. Must be some other ingredient, or maybe the peanuts are actually more natural or potent, and I am somehow developing an intolerance to peanuts? I HOPE NOT! My diet is limited as it is!

Another possible culprit is palm oil.

A Google search for [palm oil headache] found a forum topic where someone said they get headaches from palm oil, and others echoed the same problem.

"Just wondering if anyone else has noticed a connection to eating PALM OIL in food with their migraines. Everytime I eat any food with any amount of palm oil or any palm derivitives in it, I experience an extreme headache(one the feels like a migraine except it is located over entire top of head instead of one sided), or a migraine one."

"It's good you found a trigger. I think I have actually heard the same thing about palm oil sometime way back. They do seem to put it in a lot of things."

"I can't believe someone else has this same problem. I just made the connection not long ago. I would have weird headaches. I would get light headed and then this really bad headache would start and last at 24 hours. I started using almond milk with cereal in the morning and low and behold there was a palm oil dirivitive in it. Now that I have stopped using it, the headaches have subsided."

If this is indeed the case, that could explain the sudden severity of headaches. I used to have milder ones before, with some light-headedness that would come and go, but the ones I've been getting the past week or so have been intense! So you may be right about palm oil!

I'll try peanuts by themselves after the pain goes away and see if I have a problem with peanuts. If not, then it may be palm oil after all.

[CGally81]

I discovered the likely culprit.

I'd been taking fish oil for 3 weeks. Exactly 21 days, according to my food log. And I didn't do a good job of measuring it out. Today I realized I'd drank 60% of the bottle. That's a 100 serving bottle, each serving being 1.6g. You do the math. Or, well, I will - I'd been taking about 4.5g of fish oil on average every day!

But what's more, Smart Balance Peanut Butter contains Omega-3 acid - specifically, ALA (which is said to be not as potent as EPA and DHA, the two found in fish oil). Either way, with the amount of peanut butter I'd been having for breakfast, that added an extra 1g or more of Omega-3 fatty acid.

So I was taking a total of 5.5g+ Omega-3 fatty acid every single day, up from zero only a little over 3 weeks ago!

I had neither the peanut butter nor the fish oil this morning, and the light-headedness, headaches, fatigue, and difficulty concentrating, while still there, wasn't as bad as it had been the last week or two. I'm getting the fish oil out of my system. I may reintroduce it in much smaller doses, but after reading about side effects that other people had with fish oil, I wonder if it's just something I shouldn't have? Though I eat fish about once every 1-2 weeks and don't feel bad after doing so (and I actually had it for dinner, coincidentally, last night), so I might be able to have a small amount.

[HSM]

Just when I thought I was out of the woods, headaches began to show up in the past month or so and get worse. I realized that my peanut butter had hyrdogenated oil in it, which is terrible for you (it's trans fat, yet companies can legally say "0g trans fat" even if there's a lot in there), so I replaced it with a new brand that doesn't have it.

But every day for the past week or so, I'd get a nasty headache if I drank a lot of water or, heck, I just would get one sometimes. I'd sometimes feel somewhat warm in the head, but I'd feel like "light-headed", which would go away if I went to the bathroom. If I drank a lot of water, I'd be more likely to get it. The headaches tend to be far less frequent later at night.

The changes I made in the past few weeks were changing peanut butter brands, and taking fish oil every day. Fish oil is said to reduce these symptoms. I've yet to see the effect, but I do know it can take weeks or months.

What's causing this???? I hate these light-headed feelings and headaches. I hope it's not the fish oil. I also hope it's not the brand of peanut butter that's supposed to be healthier. I'd been having these problems before for the past few months, but not to this extent.

Here's my current diet. I'm not only gluten intolerant but casein intolerant, so I can't have dairy, not even yogurt.

- Smart Balance Peanut Butter (which I have for breakfast)

- fish oil (started taking for its health benefits, which I have yet to feel)

- chicken breasts

- bananas

- popcorn (no milk ingredients, no gluten, no "modified food starch")

- potatoes

- hamburger (patty only)

- brown rice

Yes, it's very limited. I really really hate this disease. Any help, anyone? What could be causing these headaches, and what gets rid of them?

Smart Balance Peanut Butter contains peanuts, evaporated cane juice, natural oil blend (palm fruit and flaxseed oils), salt and molasses. (I originally thought it had TBHQ, but instead, a brand that I avoided had it)

My previous brand, Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter contains Roasted Peanuts, Sugar, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils, Salt. It didn't seem to affect me nearly as badly. Could it be the oils in Smart Balance? The cane juice?

You are probably not eating enough, and definitely not enough of the right things. You have not listed a single vegetable in your diet. I can guarantee that you are nutrient-deficient in several categories. Your head aches can be attributed almost soley to poor nutrition. Also, when you are in poor health, your body CANNOT get the rest it needs, have you noticed any fatigue or sleep issues? How often are you moving your bowels?

Also, fish oil is a great thing to take on a regular basis IN ADDITION to eating well and exercising. Even then, you won't necessarily notice the "health benefits" it's just helping your body do it's job.

If you are going to be eating peanut butter, it shouldn't necessarily be on a regular basis, and the only ingredients should be peanuts and some sort of non-hydrogenated oil

[CGally81]

I actually take a multivitamin sold here on this site that's supposed to contain a bunch of nutrients to try to correct this problem. But yeah, I think I'm going to add baby carrots into my diet, and I'm going to try sunflower butter, and possibly some Larabars (I started a separate topic asking for food suggestions). I've gone for years, well over a decade and a half, of not eating vegetables at all, and I'd been in very good health before celiac showed up. I was probably getting my nutrients somehow.

Anyway, the rapid onset of headaches and light-headedness, and its gradual decrease, appears to be related to my excessive intake of fish oil and subsequent removal of such.

[CGally81]

Okay, I stopped taking both the fish oil on 8/4 and the Smart Balance peanut butter on 8/3, and my headaches and that nasty super light-headed feeling (and I'd feel as if I had all my air rushing to my brain or something - hard to explain but very scary) began to go away. Oh yeah, and drinking water tended to make the symptoms worse, and using the bathroom reduced them. Explain that one to me. :/

I came to the conclusion it was the fish oil, as lots of other people had said they got nasty side effects from fish oil, which hugely varied. HUGELY varied. Seriously, people reported everything from weight gain to a tingling sensation (I got that in my fingers and hands for the past week or so), to headaches in the back of the head (I'd been getting them) to migraines to lots of symptoms that I hadn't experienced.

After removing the fish oil and Smart Balance peanut butter, the headaches and light-headed feelings started to go away. It was noticable after removing the fish oil, which I did the day after that brand of PB.

On 8/7, I started a new brand of peanut butter that contains only peanuts and salt as its sole ingredients. The headaches and light-headed feelings continued to go away. Today, though, 8/10, I had some of that light-headed feeling and headache after eating dinner - which was chicken and a TON of brown rice. And it was the same stuff, though mild. Light tingling in the back of the neck, headache, and such. Using the bathroom reduced it a bit.

It wasn't as severe as it was before, but I'm wondering, is the fish oil just being stubborn about leaving my system? Like, symptoms get better, then worse, then even better, then worse, better, etc.? - which was the progression of my celiac symptoms?

I know the majority of people seem to be helped by fish oil, but there are many who have reported severe symptoms that went away after no longer taking it for a while. (Some reported symptoms getting worse when they stopped taking it, though they reported this only a few days after they stopped)

Or could it possibly be the PB? I looked up symptoms of peanut intolerance and allergy just in case, though this doesn't make sense, since PB never hurt me before, nor did the symptoms quite line up. I'm hoping it's just the fish oil being stubborn.

[LindaIone]

Just looking at your list of foods, I noticed a high percentage of your diet is high carbohydrate: bananas, potatoes, popcorn, brown rice. You may look into being carb sensitive. These foods can affect your blood sugar and possibly be causing your light-headedness, etc. (kind of like hypoglycemia). My headaches have greatly diminished since going low carb. Also, if you have a Trader Joe's, their raw almond butter is much healthier than peanut butter in that almonds are alkaline and peanuts are acidic. As for fish oil, I break out in a rash whenever I eat ANY brand of it. Better to just eat canned sardines.

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What's causing this???? I hate these light-headed feelings and headaches. I hope it's not the fish oil. I also hope it's not the brand of peanut butter that's supposed to be healthier. I'd been having these problems before for the past few months, but not to this extent.

Here's my current diet. I'm not only gluten intolerant but casein intolerant, so I can't have dairy, not even yogurt.

- Smart Balance Peanut Butter (which I have for breakfast)

- fish oil (started taking for its health benefits, which I have yet to feel)

- chicken breasts

- bananas

- popcorn (no milk ingredients, no gluten, no "modified food starch")

- potatoes

- hamburger (patty only)

- brown rice