Migraine and the Carnivore Diet

What it feels like

You plan your life around the next attack: the dark room, the nausea, the lost workday, the pills that work less each year. The people below lived that for decades.

Real people, real stories (N=1)

Our thesis

Our thesis: We think many migraines are tied to the modern diet, through blood sugar swings and food triggers, and that a ketogenic, meat-based diet may cut how often they come for some people. This is understudied for carnivore: we know of no controlled trial of a carnivore diet for migraine. The trial cited here tested a short very-low-calorie ketogenic diet in overweight women.

The bet

• A directional shift. The stories above come from real people, on camera and in their own words. They are anecdotes, but they point the same way, and we think that's worth taking seriously.
• Lower risk with your doctor in the loop. Eating meat, eggs, salt and water for a set trial period is a reversible experiment. Some migraine preventives, such as propranolol, shouldn't be stopped suddenly, so any change goes through your prescriber. The trial happens with your doctor in the loop, not around them; see the Safety check above for the details.
• Why the research is thin. Randomized trials are built for drugs and are expensive. No one can patent a steak, so the industry has little incentive to fund primal-diet research. A missing trial isn't proof that it works, and it isn't proof that it doesn't.
• The primal lens. The human body was shaped long before refined sugar, seed oils and ultra-processed food existed. We see the modern diet as the uncontrolled experiment, and a meat-based trial as a step back toward the conditions our biology evolved in.

Overview: the condition, holistically

Migraine is a neurological condition with recurring attacks of throbbing headache, often with nausea, light sensitivity or aura. Commonly discussed triggers include hormones, poor sleep, stress, skipped meals, alcohol and certain foods. Standard care includes acute medicines (pain relievers, triptans, gepants) and preventives such as beta-blockers, topiramate, amitriptyline and CGRP drugs.

How carnivore is claimed to help

What advocates say, attributed to them:

• Diet sets the severity. At 0:15 Dr. Ken Berry, "a family physician who also used to suffer from severe chronic migraines," says genetics make migraines more likely but the foods you eat set how often and how bad they are.
• Ketosis has a long history. At 55:36 Dr. Anthony Chaffee recounts a colleague describing 1920s studies in which "90 percent of people with migraines who went on a ketogenic diet stopped their migraines completely," and the rest had fewer and milder ones. (This is his secondhand account; we haven't seen those studies.)
• Plant triggers. Kerrie's macadamia-nut test above is her own N=1 experiment.

Doctors and advocates

• Dr. Ken Berry

  Family physician who says he used to have severe chronic migraines; lays out four diet steps.

• Dr. Anthony Chaffee

  Host of the Anthony Chaffee MD channel; discusses ketogenic diets for seizures and migraines.

• Dr. Shawn Baker

  Carnivore advocate and podcast host; hosts Craig T's and Kerrie M's migraine stories.

Questions to ask your doctor

Ask: "Which of my migraine medications are safe to keep, and which should never be stopped suddenly?" "How should I track headache days so we can judge a diet trial honestly?" Not sure your concerns are being heard? See when to question the advice.

Try it

• Go through the Safety check above with your doctor before you start.
• Don't stop migraine preventives on your own; any change goes through your prescriber.
• Eat fatty meat, eggs, salt and water, and keep salt, water and magnesium up in the first weeks.
• Plan meals with the KC Meatup calculator, and find KC butchers and clinicians in the directory.
• Keep a headache diary for 90 days and review it with your doctor.

Not medical advice

Personal stories, not medical advice. If you take medication (especially for blood sugar, blood pressure or mood), change your diet with your doctor in the loop.

Related conditions

Sources

Research

• Di Lorenzo C et al. (2014). Migraine improvement during short lasting ketogenesis: a proof-of-concept study. European Journal of Neurology. https://doi.org/10.1111/ene.12550. 96 overweight women with migraine got either a one-month very-low-calorie ketogenic diet followed by a standard diet, or a standard low-calorie diet. Ketogenic, not carnivore, and only in overweight women.

Videos (all verified by oEmbed. Timestamps are confirmed against YouTube auto-captions. Quotes are from the auto-captions.)

• Coach Craig T healed damaged gut, 40-year migraines, sinuses, and sleep on a carnivore lifestyle, Dr. Shawn Baker Podcast, uploaded 2021-02-28
• Coach Kerrie M resolved chronic migraines, inflammation, and hormone imbalances on a carnivore diet, Dr. Shawn Baker Podcast, uploaded 2021-01-09
• Reduce MIGRAINE Headaches by 95% (4 Simple Steps) 2026, KenDBerryMD, uploaded 2021-07-03
• How To Stop Seizures and Migraines! 100 Years of Clinical Evidence!, Anthony Chaffee MD, uploaded 2022-06-14