Chocolate for migraines?

First hot cocoa, now a headache study. Chocolate seems to be in the air for me this week: I couldn’t resist weighing in on this one. Yesterday, I learned about a new paper–just accepted into the journal Brain Research–showing the first evidence that cocoa can be beneficial in reducing the symptoms of migraine headaches. Presenting at the annual meeting of the International Headache Society, the scientists behind the work said that they’d found a link between cocoa and the repression of inflammatory responses within the parts of the brain where migraines are thought to originate.

I mentioned this to my mother–a frequent migraine sufferer–and her tone reflected more than a little skepticism. Chocolate, in her experience, was more a trigger than a salve.

My curiosity now thoroughly piqued, I did some digging. The largest and most extensive study–out of the University of Pittsburgh–found that in a double blind test (where nobody knew whether they were getting chocolate or a placebo), chocolate had no effect on headache onset. This was echoed in a few other smaller experiments. Overall, in other words, chocolate shouldn’t be a trigger.

This said, there was a second (albeit tiny) British experiment that, despite being double blind, did find a tenuous connection. A good number of other people have jumped on all this and there actually seems to be some consensus where this discrepancy might come from: It turns out that very small amounts of caffeine are sometimes added to cocoa as it’s being processed. (For comparison, a 5 ounce cup of coffee has between 80 and 115 milligrams of caffeine. An ounce of dark chocolate, by contrast, contains between 5 and 25 milligrams.) Because there is, indeed, a link between migraines and caffeine, it’s possible that somebody sensitive to the substance could be reacting to that ingredient, rather than the chocolate.

I’m semi-sold on this solution, but not entirely (interestingly, my mother accepted the above possibility much more readily). Obviously for migraine sufferers who’ve never seen detrimental effects from chocolate, this new data is great news. I’d try it! But for those who have, my suspicion is that there have to be a few more factors at work here. Bottom line: If the mood strikes you, I’d be interested in hearing about other people’s experiences with this.