Understaffing, heavy workloads, and unpredictable patient needs are often the reasons why nurses find themselves skipping meals to perform their tasks before they clock out. A Joyce University of Nursing and Health Sciences article that surveyed 1,000 registered nurses (RNs) in the US found that for the majority of their shifts, 55% of them skipped breaks or meals because they were too busy at work.
But adrenaline, caffeine, and compassion aren’t enough to sustain nurses who need to have the stamina and focus to provide care for patients. They need filling and nutritious meals to give them the energy and focus necessary to handle high-stress situations at work. And when nurses regularly skip meals, they’re at an increased risk of several health challenges, one of which is developing migraines, a neurological condition that affects up to 148 million people around the world. Migraines can be debilitating and painful, and as one of the most common types of primary headaches nurses get, nurses need to understand what triggers them and how to properly prevent them.
This article discusses how skipping meals triggers migraines in nurses and what nurses can do to prevent them during long shifts.
Why Skipping Meals on a Shift Triggers Migraines: The Blood Sugar Connection
Aside from potentially developing other illnesses, such as digestive disorders and cardiovascular diseases, not eating meals can lead to headache disorders.
The nurse meal-skipping and migraine connection lies in the fluctuations it causes in blood sugar levels, which can trigger migraines in up to 57% of people who have them. Many studies have found that skipping meals or fasting can trigger migraines by reducing brain glucose levels, leading to hypoglycemia. Eating regularly can help ensure that blood glucose is at normal levels, which can effectively correct hypoglycemia and reduce the risk of triggering migraine attacks.
How to Prevent Migraines on a 12-Hour Shift: A Nurse’s Nutrition Guide
By default, nurses are almost always operating on hard mode. But working long hours while nursing a migraine can make the difficult shift even more challenging. The following are helpful ways on how to prevent migraines on 12-hour shifts:
- Make sure to get enough sleep: Migraines and sleep are deeply interconnected. When you don’t get enough hours of sleep, the likelihood of you developing headaches is higher. An Arctic-based study found that a main protective factor against migraine attacks is quality sleep. Meanwhile, insufficient and poor-quality sleep due to insomnia or nighttime fatigue can also lead to migraine attacks.
- Keep a regular schedule: Even on your days off, go to bed and wake up at the same time. It’s easy to find yourself sleeping longer hours on your days off, but this can lead to developing a “weekend migraine,” a kind of headache that can occur due to oversleeping. A consistent bedtime schedule will also enable you to keep a consistent meal schedule, which can help prevent you from skipping meals and triggering migraines.
- Avoid migraine-triggering foods: Certain foods can trigger migraines, such as the following:
- Tyramine-rich foods: These are typically aged or fermented foods, such as aged cheeses, certain types of beer, cured meats, smoked fish, fermented soy, miso, kimchi, and sauerkraut. Certain fruits and vegetables are also high in tyramine, such as oranges, grapefruits, lemons, limes, tangerines, pineapples, fava beans, and raw onions.
- Histamine-rich foods: Processed foods, alcoholic beverages, meats, pineapples, papayas, cherries, tomatoes, eggplants, and legumes.
- Tannin-rich foods: Red wine, coffee, tea, apple juice, strawberries, persimmons, grapes, mangoes, and cranberries.
- Meal-prep smart food choices: Reduce the risk of ordering fast food or snacking on potentially migraine-triggering foods at work by meal prepping. On your days off, consider batch cooking dishes that you can divvy up into portions that you can easily take to work or eat at home after a long shift. Not only will doing this help you maintain a regular meal schedule, but it can also help you better keep track of your macros and save you money. Great migraine-friendly food options to include in your meal prep and snack boxes include:
- Dark leafy vegetablesAvocadoDark chocolateMackerelSalmonWhole grainsBread
- Eggs
- Drink plenty of water: Hydration is important to stave off migraine attacks. A 2020 study found that women who drank more water significantly reduced the frequency, duration, and severity of migraine disability.
If you’re prone to getting migraines, it’s a good idea to keep track of when you get them, how severe they are, what you’ve eaten and drank before the migraine attack, and other symptoms of note. Doing so can help you identify patterns, avoid personal triggers, and give your doctor comprehensive information that can help determine appropriate treatment or prevention strategies.
