quote:

Originally posted by c1steve:
I was at an IHOP one morning, came to work an hour later and got in an argument with the building's owner. We are both very easy going, and a couple of hours later I realized that the sausages or other food probably had MSG or other neurotoxin, which put me in a high state of fight or flight. After I eat food that has MSG/similar neurotoxin, I do not notice the effect until I start coming down from the "high". I then realize what I had been going through the last few hours.

What evidence do you have that MSG is a neurotoxin? Please cite a scientific source for that statement.

Could it be that the headache is just caused by dehydration from not drinking enough water when you eat salty foods?

I used to get headaches from Taco Bell, and the my friend goes, "Bro. You need to drink a bunch of water when you eat that crap."

Bam. Solved.

I've never had an issue with MSG and tend to like a lot of foods that contain it. Thanks to the recent jerky thread, I've been eating way more than normal, currently on a bag of Buc-ee's Bohemian Recipe Garlic Beef Jerky.

This thread got me reading more and more articles on MSG and one item I found interesting is that the production of MSG is via fermentation.

I have always had allergies, and pretty much any item that has been fermented I will have a mild reaction to. Wine or beer, I will get a stuffed up nose right away, Swiss cheese, (and other "aged" cheeses) my throat will itch like crazy. Still drink/eat the stuff, but I know the end result.

So, learning this makes sense, my guess is I am reacting like I do with every other fermented product.

some light reading:

site:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ msg

^ one of the hits:

Monosodium L-glutamate: a double-blind study and review. Dec 1993 [ ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ ]

Abstract

71 healthy subjects were treated with placebos and monosodium L-glutamate (MSG) doses of 1.5, 3.0 and 3.15 g/person, which represented a body mass-adjusted dose range of 0.015-0.07 g/kg body weight before a standardized breakfast over 5 days. The study used a rigorous randomized double-blind crossover design that controlled for subjects who had MSG after-tastes. Capsules and specially formulated drinks were used as vehicles for placebo and MSG treatments. Subjects mostly had no responses to placebo (86%) and MSG (85%) treatments. Sensations, previously attributed to MSG, did not occur at a significantly higher rate than did those elicited by placebo treatment. A significant (P < 0.05) negative correlation between MSG dose and after-effects was found. The profound effect of food in negating the effects of large MSG doses was demonstrated. The common practice of extrapolating food-free experimental results to 'in use' situations was called into question. An exhaustive review of previous methodologies identified the strong taste of MSG as the factor invalidating most 'blind' and 'double-blind' claims by previous researchers. The present study led to the conclusion that 'Chinese Restaurant Syndrome' is an anecdote applied to a variety of postprandial illnesses; rigorous and realistic scientific evidence linking the syndrome to MSG could not be found.

from the study URL:

NCBI National Center for Biotechnology Information

NLM National Library of Medicine

NIH National Institutes of Health

When I was about 13 I ate a huge Chinese meal while my parents were out. I had a horrible headache soon after. Parents said it was the msg. I believed them and the headache faded (so I wasn’t sick). But that has never happened to me since. And I’ve eaten a lot of Chinese since then.

It makes me fart like you wouldn't believe, real smelly flavorful stuff too. I used to eat food with it all the time, then a friend told me how it makes her feel bloated and I stopped eating stuff with it, stopped farting, ended up marrying her. Funny how that worked out. Nobody likes farts.

nope