Transcript from Webinar:

Hey there. How are you all doing?

This is Dr. John, back here again with another episode of “Ask Dr. John.” 

I’ve got a couple of things that I want to talk about today. One of those is headaches.  They afflict a very high percentage of the population, and we do a great job of dealing with them. We’re going to go into some detail there. I have a few questions to answer before that. We got some great ones from some of the listeners. Before we answer the questions, Kathryn is going to talk about one of your favorite things.

00:41

Kathryn: Yes. I am going to be talking about watermelon, a nice summer treat and the benefits of it. In Chinese medicine, fruits and vegetables and even meat have different healing qualities and properties. What’s great about watermelon, is that most of the seasons are in the summertime, and it is a cooling fruit. What that means, is it will help clear, hot, cool summer heat. This will help to nourish the fluids in the body and promote urination. One thing with heat, especially the summer heat, is it can cause constipation because the heat dries everything up, and watermelon can help with that. Watermelon is great for many different things. If you do have a weak digestion, you’ll want to eat this in fair amount and small amounts because it is also cold in nature. Cold vegetables and fruits plus raw fruits and vegetables are not the best for our weak digestion.

01:50

Dr Nieters: Thank you – So get your watermelon.  From a western standpoint, we know now the Chinese were so sophisticated.  You know, and I’m not Chinese; I have no ax to grind here, but the things that they discovered thousands of years ago are, in my opinion, are completely mind blowing.

I have a book right behind me over here called “The Genius of China,” which I could take a show and go through ten pages at a time and you’d be blown away.  They were making testosterone and human growth hormone pills hundreds and hundreds of years ago. They were doing inoculations a little after 1000 A.D. They were treating thyroid disorders in 618 A.D. better than 99% of doctors are treating it now. They completely mapped out the neurological system, your nerves, over 2500 years ago. They completely mapped out your circulatory system over 2000 years ago. Another thing that they did is that they classified all foods and many other things by many different qualities, amongst them thermal qualities.

03:10 SIGNFICANCE OF FOOD TEMPERATURES

For example, some foods are hot, some are warm, some are neutral, some are cool, and some are cold.  Herbs are classified in the same way. If you’ve got a really hot condition, you might want some really cold herbs in the Chinese way of treating, which is actually very similar to the Western way of treating, and exactly the opposite of homeopathic.  It’s very fascinating. All of those work, if you do them properly in the right condition.

03:43 SIGNIFICANCE OF FOOD COLORS

The Chinese then identified different colors of foods that were most valuable for different seasons and most valuable for different conditions. The red, yellow, orange fruits and vegetables they knew were very, very powerful for increasing the chi flow and affecting the lungs. For example, watermelon with the red being red was one of those foods. Now, we now know that watermelon is the richest food and lycopene is an incredibly powerful antioxidant., very good for the prostate, very good for the heart, very good for the eyes. Plus, a whole list of other antioxidants. Plus, it’s got a lot of good fluids in it.

04:31

One of the questions that I’ve been asked today is from one of our favorite people. I don’t announce people’s names in the layout unless they ask me to. “Health impact of inorganic salts versus organic sodium from plants like celery, tomatoes, etc..” Yes, the organic compounds are much more easily absorbed and utilized by the body in most cases.  You’ll see supplements such as magnesium, potassium, etc. If you have something that’s a pure inorganic sodium like magnesium oxide, it’s great to clean you out. It’s great for before a colonoscopy, for example, but very little of that magnesium is absorbed. The body doesn’t recognize it as something that it wants to take in. Different supplements or foods where you have binding within the foods or the supplements, for example, with magnesium, sometimes it will have it bound at threonic acid for magnesium threonate best form to penetrate the blood brain barrier; magnesium citrate, which is citric acid.

This binding allows the body to accept it more easily and utilize the better chromium picolinate, zinc picolinate, etc. They’re bound to picolinate  acid.  That binding makes it more readily available and more like a natural product, and the body will absorb it much better.

06:18

The question goes on to say, “You’ve heard that the others can contribute to arthritis and other health problems.” Yes, particularly when we’re talking about table salt. There are many, many different forms of what we typically call table salt, sodium chloride. Now, the salt that most of us grew up with, the iodized salt, is heated to about 1200 degrees, which totally degrades it and turns it into a form that is very, very hard to utilize and absorb, but which can then actually increase arthritis, cardiovascular risk, etc. The sea salts, which have a good combination of minerals in them are much, much healthier. Then, if you get the Himalayan pink sea salt, which if it’s from true Himalayan sources and a lot of it’s not; a lot of it’s fake. If you do, that will have the entire complex of minerals that are important for the human body and in a form that is much easier to absorb.

Now, even easier than that is to get your salt, your sodium, your other minerals from fruits and vegetables. Sometimes we actually can’t do that, though. There’s just not enough in them. That kind of gets us to the next question on this list. It says, “…i.e., is that is it that the plants are predigesting the rocks, making them bioavailable?” Yeah, that’s close enough. I mean, it’s certainly not a good chemical or biochemical explanation, but I like it.

It’s translated into forms that the plants need, which are what our bodies were trained.  They were trained over time and selected to use those particular fruits and vegetables.

08:23

Next question:  “Is Camellia Sinensis a super absorber of toxic environmental fluoride from soil, etc.?” The answer, unfortunately, is unequivocally yes. All of the plants that we call tea with caffeine, black tea, green tea, white tea, matcha, etc. Now, there are infusions that are sometimes called tea which are not camellia sinensis, but those are the noncaffeinated forms. Camellia Sinensis is a super absorber for many things, not just fluoride. The other many things are part of what makes it so powerful. It will absorb what’s ever in the soil as the super absorber, meaning it’s more powerful in a good way and more powerful in an unhealthy way.  Fluoride does get condensed, bioaccumulated, in the camellia plant.

09:25

The leaves, almost all of it’s over 99%, I believe of the fluoride is in the leaves. Again, it’s pulled up from the soil. If you have a fluoride free soil that you wouldn’t have fluoride in the plant. It’s hard to find true fluoride-free soil. There are some Japanese teas that are grown in an areas with lower fluoridation, so those are a little healthier, but it does bioaccumulate. It is a problem.

It’s a problem for the pineal gland. It causes can cause fluorosis, which is an over hardening of the teeth. Young kids should never get the tea ever, because it can increase osteosarcoma risk, which is a bone cancer risk in adults. I don’t really worry about that at that level. However, the fluoride levels from drinking tea grossly exceed the maximum safety guidelines in most countries.

10:28

There was one very large study that I read large like 50 pages and quite a few people where they looked at tea drinking in the Republic of Ireland, which they’re big, big beer drinkers, even more than China. They drink a lot of black tea, and they were getting huge amounts of fluoride well over the recommended allowances. Now, on the other side of that, there are not a lot of illnesses that are clearly and absolutely attributable to that fluoride in their case.  There are some suspicions, so I don’t want to make it sound like it’s not an issue. I personally still drink Camellia Sinensis. I think that the benefits to me outweigh the risks. Again, it’s like anything else. It depends on age. It depends on the sex of the person involved. It depends on their size, etc. Probably even genetics.  For me, I drink it. I would never give it to younger people, and with people that show any signs of fluoride sensitivity, I would not give it to them.

Some of the problems with fluoride, you get actually tooth discoloration. You get what’s called fluorosis, which are white spots on the teeth; that is more pronounced in younger kids. Even just from drinking water, it’s a problem. Very high intake of fluoridated water, according to many dentists, actually weakens the enamel. Again, that’s a debate, but many dentists don’t like it for that. Skeletal weakness can have pretty high levels of damage to the skeletal muscles if there’s too much ingested. Acne risk is increased in fluoride drinkers. There is a definite decrease in IQ amongst younger kids, and there is an increase in passivity in older people.

Again, I think it’s a real bad thing, but I still drink a little green tea. You’ve got to make those choices for yourself.

Thank you for those questions. I appreciate that tremendously.

12:55 HEADACHES – Which Migraine Are You?

I’m going to now turn to headaches. There was an email, a newsletter, that Kathryn sent out today, so I’m just going to stay with that topic.  The title of this is, “Which Migraine Are You?” Now, as you know, not everybody has migraines, so it’s not a great question. You could be the “I’m not a migraine person,” totally possible.  However, in Chinese medicine, when someone comes in and says that they have a headache, we’re going to do the work up a little bit differently than your medical doctor. Now, if you have a good medical doctor, they’re going to ask you a lot of important questions. Do you have any triggers? How long does that last? Do you get nausea?  Do you get auras, etc..

We are going to ask all of those questions for sure, but we’re going to want to know temporal.  Is it worse in the morning or worse in the afternoon?  Worse with stress. What part of your head? That’s a question that is a little less important to the Western medical doctors and very important to us. Every location on the head signifies to us a different type of headache, so it’s very, very important.

14:20

Migraines affect about 10% of people worldwide.  Unfortunately, a lot of people with migraines and even just general headaches don’t realize that it increases risk factors for a whole range of problems for migraines. It doubles the risk of stroke, which is a pretty significant problem because migraines are actually vascular in nature; it’s a blood flow issue. There may be muscular tension involved. There may be lots of things, but ultimately it’s a blood flow issue, and that makes it a lot more dangerous.

Typically, migraines are one sided. They may go back and forth, but they’re typically on one side at a time. Not always, but usually. The pain can vary from so severe it makes people nonfunctional, to actually no pain at all. They’re still calling them migraines, They will just show up with auras and change in vision. Others will be just with nausea and no pain in the head.

In general, it’s pretty severe pain. Often you’ll see visual disturbances that’s problematic, particularly if you see what’s called scintillating scotoma.  In scintillating scotoma, if you’ve ever had a newer TV that was starting to go out, you’ll notice that some of the little dots, the pixels, aren’t working correctly and you’ll see these kinds of squiggly lines. Well, in migraines with visual disturbance where you have the scintillating scotoma, those are a big, big concern for me.

16:09 – BLOOD FLOW WITH MIGRAINES

Auras, or changes in blood flow at all are to me very, very significant because if there’s an aura that increases the risk factor in general, and that’s whether you have pain or not. Easily, a migraine with aura is at more than double the risk of stroke. Now migraine sufferers who smoke are at triple the risk of stroke. If you have migraines, you should not even be near anybody that is smoking.

Something that is really overlooked is migraine sufferers who both smoke and use birth control are seven times more likely to suffer a stroke.  Seven times! If you’re on birth control and you have migraines, your risk of migraine is higher. If you smoke and have migraines, your risk of stroke is higher.  If you smoke and use birth control, it’s through the roof – seven times higher.

17:12 – HEADACHE TRIGGERS

Now, one of the problems with migraines is every few years they think they’ve figured out what the triggers are.  I was very fortunate.  In my twenties, I used to get horrific migraines. I mean, I would lock myself in a pitch black room with no sound for two days with severe nausea. I figured out what my triggers were and, knock on wood, I have not had a migraine since my mid-twenties. I don’t ever want one because they’re horrible. Some of the more common triggers are environmental changes: humidity, air pressure; with a high pressure or a low pressure front coming in.  Poor self-care: lack of sleep or disturbed sleep, obviously stress, diets that are high in sugar, fat, preservatives, nitrates, MSG, alcohol.  Coffee and black tea are interesting. While people that drink coffee can have higher rates of migraine, one of the most common causes of migraine is to stop drinking coffee.

For example, I get people that are coming in and they’re in agony and they said, “I spent all weekend in bed.” I’ll say, “What time did you have your morning coffee?” “Well, I didn’t. I felt too bad.” “What time do you normally have your morning coffee?” “First thing in the morning and then I have a second cup.”  The lack of caffeine, in fact this is even more common, can be a trigger for migraine because the caffeine causes constriction of the blood vessels in the neck, the brain and the head. So when you don’t have it, those vessels can expand, and when they expand, they can then press on the nerves and also cause differences in blood flow. If you’re susceptible to migraines, keep your caffeine consumption very regular. Again, no matter what the trigger is, classic migraines usually will have a sensitivity to light, sound and smell, and then bouts of nausea and vomiting.

Again, big, big problem.  if you have migraines, do not overlook them. Get treatment immediately.  I’ve mentioned a couple of the long-term problems with stroke. You also get cardiovascular disease, you get an increase in C-reactive protein levels, etc..  This is a pretty big problem. Lots of things have been tried to eliminate migraines, and I’m going to go through a few of those. Again, migraines with aura, particularly if it’s more than a few seconds, 50 to 70% higher risk in older women. Migraines have also been associated with brain lesions.  At least every couple of months I’ll read an MRI from one of my patients and it will indicate migraine-induced demyelination. Myelin is the protective covering around your nerves.  When that degrades, the nerves can touch just like wires. That’s what happens in multiple sclerosis. Then you start sending the wrong messages about.  So demyelination means that myelin sheath is actually being degraded. Again, here we’re having poor blood flow to the area, so we’re getting poor oxygenation; we’re getting poor myelination and eventually that will show up in film studies of the brain. That’s really a very bad thing.

20:59

There was a study done in Netherlands quite a while back that showed much higher levels of brain lesions, a big deal. In fact, it generally was hard to distinguish between the brains of people with chronic migraines or migraines with aura from transient ischemic attack or TIA’s (little mini strokes). The same thing is happening. It’s like they’re both having repeated little mini strokes because they’re associated with insufficient oxygen, and they both put people at risk for major stroke, whether it’s TIA or migraine demyelination.

This is really a pretty big problem. In some of those studies in the Netherlands, they used pretty high doses of CoQ-10 and got pretty good reductions. Now, in terms of migraine triggers, as I mentioned, there can be so many different things. I have a couple patients that usually get triggered if they’re sitting in their living room and a car goes by and the light glints off their windows, then flashes in their eyes, often that’ll trigger a migraine. There are studies from the early sixties with lists of the most likely migraine-causing foods.

Synthetic fragrances are a big problem. I know people if they walk into a room that has one of those plug-in air fresheners; instant migraine.

22:35 – BLOOD SUGAR IMBALANCES AND MIGRAINES

One of the things that gets overlooked a lot is blood sugar problems. I had a patient come in about my age, early seventies, and she didn’t even come in for her migraines. She’d given up on that. She came in for something else, but when we got around to her migraines, she was having them daily, and they were pretty much making it impossible for her to live huge amounts of her life happily.  In questioning her, it took me two visits before it became really clear. I said, “I think you have hypoglycemia. When you’re hitting those hypoglycemic levels, then your migraines kick in.” She said, “Look, I’ve been to so many doctors, somebody would have noticed that.” I said, “Well, I still recommend that you go back to your doctor and have them do a study for hypoglycemia.” She called and said, “You know, my doctor just laughed at me.  She’s not going to do that study.” I said, “Okay, I highly recommend that you do it.” She did. There are several levels on a blood test that can come back. You get highs, you get lows, and occasionally you get a flag and occasionally it’s so severe that the lab will call me. That only happens maybe once a year. The lab called me for her and said, “Do not let her drive. Her blood sugar is 34. She could go into a coma at any moment and probably has no idea what she’s doing.” After that her doctor actually did recheck and found that she had pretty significant or severe hypoglycemia and indeed that was what was triggering her headaches. Fortunately we got a good result there, but it’s often overlooked. If you get migraines, be sure to keep your blood sugars level. Absolutely stay away from meats with nitrates, no MSG, and stay away from caffeinated beverages unless you’re really hooked, etc..

Those are some of the some of the triggers. Now things that you can do to deal with your migraines.

24:53 HOW TO DEAL WITH YOUR MIGRAINE

External Wind

Chinese medicine, as I mentioned, has its own subdivisions based on etiology and symptomatology.

• What causes them?
• What brings them on?
• What are the symptoms like?
• So what part of your head, for example, or what other symptoms do you get with it?

Now, the Chinese say that the wind is the leader of the evils so pretty much everything is caused by wind. However, you have to know what they meant by that. Again, it’s a translation. Some of it was the wind. Just being in the wind is a problem, but they also knew that most bacteria and viral illnesses were spread through the air. So they said it’s the external wind. It’s coming into your system from the outside. That’s talking about the forces of energy that are affecting us from outside of the body. Again, that can be something literally as simple as true wind. You’re out in the wind and you get chilled, but also it can be viruses, bacteria, etc.. Now, with the external wind headaches, those can take a variety of forms and locations. Often it’s more the whole head involved. Sometimes it’s the back of the head, sometimes it’s the front, depending on how much the sinuses are affected.

26:17  – TCM LIVER EXCESS

The second and really the biggest factor for most bad migraines are liver excess. Now, I’m not going to go into all the functions of liver from a Chinese standpoint today. I’ve done that on several other shows, so I highly recommend that you go check them out because they’re very relevant to this. One of the factors in liver pathologies is that high stress will cause liver depression, liver Qi stagnation, or both. When that happens, women get PMS, everybody gets headaches. It’s really a problem now. Women are three times more likely to experience migraines, and that’s mostly due to hormonal fluctuation. The liver also regulates menstruation. So migraines related to cyclical hormone changes just generally fall into that category, too.  When it’s associated with liver Qi stagnation, it’s more of an expanding and extending feeling. It’s often triggered by stress or relationship to the menstrual cycle. Often with the liver depression, just before the menses start, that’s when the liver Qi stagnation will really severely kick in, and you’ll get these horrible, horrible headaches. Sometimes you get a heat accumulation of the liver, also, and those liver fire-type migraines, characterized by red, burning eyes, sometimes hard to breathe, but the biggest feature is irritability. You just can’t stand being in your own skin and anything around you will irritate the heck out of you. Now, in Chinese medicine, the liver is a wood organ, and the spleen and stomach are earth organs. There’s a condition called earth-assailing wood or earth-attacking wood or an earth-wood disharmony where you’ll see the liver energy, an intense energy, that actually affects the digestive system. That’s where you get the nausea, the changes in appetite, the vomiting, etc.. Often this liver-fire type, you’ll also have maybe a flushed face, high blood pressure, sometimes severe ringing. Those kind of go together.

28:59 – TCM QI and BLOOD DEFICIENCY

Now, the next thing I’m talking about is Qi and blood deficiency. There are many reasons why you can have deficiencies, particularly in our culture. When I was in China working in clinics, I saw a fraction of the deficiency that I see here. There I saw a lot more heat, and here I see a lot more deficiency. For example, my patients that literally cannot get out of bed on day two or day three of their menses, it’s a blood deficiency, usually with a Qi efficiency. Literally there’s not enough oxygen; there’s not enough nutrients getting into their brains.  I’ve had to come in and treat my staff that have had this literally they were lying on the floor and a fetal position, and I had to give them herbs just so they could get home. Fortunately, there’s some very, very specific, very powerful herbs for this Qi and blood deficiency. Thank goodness we have that.

30:01 – TCM BLOOD STASIS

The next one is blood stasis or blood stagnation. Now, there is a saying basically. “Free flow equals no pain, no free flow equals pain.; So if there’s any stagnation that can be fluid, it can be dampness, it can be Qi stagnation, or it can be blood stagnation or food stagnation. If any of those are stagnate, there will be pain. There’s no question about that. Those can tend to be the most severe migraines. This is really consistent with the West.   Here, you’ve got the blood with spasms often in the blood vessels, and the blood is literally not moving. It is literally stagnant or static. These are the worst headaches. These are sharp, lancinating pain, usually in a fixed location because the blood is stuck in a fixed location.

30:59

The Qi and blood deficiency is just everything is going to be deficient, and it just feels like your head is hollow and empty and you can’t function.  With blood stagnation, it’s a specific location. So the more specific and the more pain, the more danger, in my opinion.  These tend to be really steady. Sometimes they’re associated with memory loss, sometimes with palpitations, and this has got to be treated right away. Sometimes there’ll be a history of head injury. post-COVID these are very common because of the micro-clotting that occurs. Also post-COVID vaccine injuries, again, because of the micro clotting that occurs. You can actually see on live blood analysis the blood being hypercoagulable. It’s literally just stuck and not moving.  This migraine is horrible.

31:53 – TCM COLD, DAMP PHLEGM

Then you have retention of cold, damp phlegm.  With these, you’ll get the foggy headedness with the headache, just don’t want to function, don’t have any energy. You may have some dizziness. You may actually get some phlegm buildup, like your sinuses, etc., but you also might get some edema and some swelling in the tissues. This one is often worse when there are temperature changes or changes in barometric pressure. Because when we have low pressure, then literally our tissues swell. We don’t think about that. We don’t notice it, but they do. They actually swell because there’s less pressure, and you get pressure that wasn’t there before. If you get a high pressure area around you, it literally squeezes your tissues and can cause a very similar type of problem.

32:50 – MIGRAINE LOCATION

These are, again, the different types, in terms of location. Headaches that are in the frontal sinuses are generally associated with the stomach in Chinese medicine, somewhat the lungs. If they’re in the temples, it’s generally a gallbladder headache and most migraines are gallbladder headaches. You notice people will actually get a little bit green often, and green is the color of the gallbladder, so they go together. Liver headaches are often on top of the head, and headaches from dehydration or stress are often at the back of the head. So again, by telling the quality of the pain, the location of the pain, when it occurs, we know how to treat it.

There are very powerful herbal formulas to treat each one of those different conditions. Of course, we can do acupuncture for it, and often we will do acupuncture as the initial treatment to help people get out of pain.

33:54 – ACUPUNCTURE AND MIGRAINE

Kathryn is actually quite magical. She had accidentally discovered that the treatment she was doing, a facial-type treatment for inflammation. I had three or four patients come in to me after seeing her, and I would say, “Hey, how are your headaches?” “I don’t have them anymore.” “What do you mean you don’t have any; you had them for years.”  “Yeah. As soon as I saw Kathryn, they went away.” So Kathryn is now our headache specialist, particularly migraine headaches. She gets great results. She really works the head and the front of the head.

Now for chronic headache pain, there are a few things you can do.  Again, none of these work for all headaches because they don’t work for the ones that they treat.  As I mentioned, there are several different types, so you have to know which one to apply. 

34:51- MIGRAINE INTERVENTIONS

One way is biofeedback.  The biofeedback and the effects of biofeedback are about comparable to many of the drugs used for migraines, the migraine drugs especially the most recent category that’s being used all had very significant side effects. If you’re going to do biofeedback instead of taking the drugs, that’s a big benefit.

35:18

Brent Musburger, who’s an M.D., did studies and showed that medical acupuncture is at least as effective as the blood pressure medication, such as beta blockers for migraines.

35:32

Melatonin – two-thirds of the study who took melatonin before going to bed every night for three months, said the number of migraines they experienced dropped by 50%. Now, not everyone can take melatonin. I’ve found about 10%, just horrific, intense Technicolor dreams, and another 10% feel like they’ve been drugged the next day. However, it’s something to try.

35:58

Magnesium may be the single best; it’s at least one of the three best treatments for migraine. It’s been estimated that 80% of the population is magnesium deficient. Magnesium runs so many processes. We could sit here for a week and talk about them, but if and when in doubt, take some extra magnesium. The only side effect from that is if you get too much, you’ll get some loose stools.

36:28

Diet. Again, we mentioned you want to make sure you’re not consuming triggers. Sometimes a little food diary helps.

36:37

Chiropractic helps some people, particularly upper cervical chiropractic treatment.  It doesn’t help everybody, but some people it does, depending on, again, the cause of the migraine.

36:53

The biggest thing that I’m finding is, and this has been shown in recent studies, is a migraine is a disorder of chronic sympathetic dysfunction. The sympathetic nervous system has been dysregulated, it’s running rampant, and it’s filling you with stress hormones. Those stress hormones increase inflammation and change blood flow patterns. Ultimately, that’s really the biggie there.

37:22

A couple of other things you could try –

5HTP. Five hydroxy-l-tryptophan is a naturally occurring compound in your brain and also can be obtained from Peony, which is an herb. We know that if serotonin is low, you have more pain. If serotonin is increased, you have less pain. 5-HTP is a precursor to serotonin. In a clinical trial of 5-HTP against a prescription drug, they had the same level of effectiveness.  However, the 5-HTP helped people long term. The drugs made them worse. In that study, they used 50 milligrams of 5-HTP, 1-3 times a day.

38:16

Another trial that was done in Philadelphia at Thomas Jefferson University, they gave 150 mg per day of CoQ10 for three months. After three months, about 60% of the subjects reported that their days without migraine was double what it had been before, so that’s kind of cool. There was a Swiss study that replicated the same results. CoQ10 is a superior antioxidant, and if you couple it with magnesium, they are a great, great couplet.

38:55

Also, you can do a combination of vitamin B6, B12 and folic acid, which dramatically actually decreases the frequency, severity and disability from migraine headaches. Now we know that that B vitamin combination lowers homocysteine levels. Homocysteine is a marker of inflammation and poor B vitamin utilization. People with higher homocysteine levels have dramatically higher risk for dementia. This may be part of the reason that there’s such an increase in dementia risk with the migraine sufferers. Again, 28 million people are experiencing frequent migraines, and sometimes that can be as simple as taking a vitamins and minerals supplement.

39:51

Now, one of the things you can do, there are locations all around the Bay Area where you can get intravenous infusions or injections of magnesium and vitamin B6. They usually add other things, but this is a known migraine stopper.  It will just stop migraines in its tracks. Again, you need to double check why it’s all happening. However, if you’re desperate, you can call one of the infusion sites. We use a company called the VivifyMD. I love those people out in Walnut Creek, CA.  We use them for infusion therapies.

40:31

If you’re not going to do that, you could do 200 milligrams of magnesium citrate twice a day, 200 milligrams of vitamin B6 twice a day, and then add 3 Feverfew capsules twice a day and then a multivitamin and mineral, and that should give you pretty good coverage.

41:02

A study was done in Korea on what’s called transformed migraine, which is a common type of chronic daily headaches. In this study, the avoidance of caffeine and alcohol had no effect on the migraine status, but stopping painkillers and regular exercise got rid of most of their headaches.

41:30

Now, a well-known combination to stop migraines in terms of herbs is the combination of Feverfew and Butterbur. There are dozens of them online. I can’t speak to which ones are the best, but they’ve been used with great success for a long time. The key is they usually don’t kick in right away. It usually takes 60 to 90 days before the Butterbur and Feverfew really start to do the job. I’ve seen it be extremely effective.

42:00

Now I want to mention a couple of new treatments that I’m seeing that are working really, really well. One is monoclonal antibodies.  These are injections usually once a month, and they have a tremendous success rate against migraines. The one I’m most familiar with is one called Aimovig.  That’s the one I saw almost exclusively for a while, but it causes a little more constipation, so a lot of people are now using one called Emgality. I’m seeing really, really great results. They attached to the callus calcitonin gene-related peptide, they call it, and that can impact migraines by widening the blood vessels in the brain, which sounds like a good idea whether you have migraines or not. However, you won’t get it if you don’t have migraines.

43:07

I’m feeling pretty good about what I’m seeing with this category of drugs. I’ve seen it happen very quickly. They say maybe 3 to 6 months. Most of my patients have been migraine-free after their first treatment. It’s way, way better, way safer and way more powerful than using the old triptan drugs which caused severe rebound.

43:33

Last thing I want to talk about is a device called a Cefaly. It’s about $400, and it’s a device that you literally put on your head and you use it for about 20 minutes at a time. In one clinical study, 79% of acute migraine sufferers saw pain relief within one hour. That’s pretty amazing; 32% experienced complete freedom from migraine problems.

It’s really easy to use. Like I said, it’s about $400. I have a few patients that use it. I would say 65 to 70% report very good results.

What I want you to do is I want you to think over the next few days or the next week of any questions that you have about headaches, and/or migraines, and/or treatments. I want you to send them to me. I’d love to talk more, but this kind of gives you a whole general outline.

Oh, one of the things I found is that migraines with aura, one benefit is they lower dementia risk, so that’s kind of cool. At least there’s some benefit to those migraines with auras.

That’s all I’m going to talk about today. I want to thank you for your questions and for your tremendous encouragement that I’m getting and for listening in. Again, it’s no point in doing this without you, and I want to thank you. I want you to be happy, be healthy, and I’ll be back next week. Bye bye.

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REFERNCES:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/959257.The_Genius_of_China

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/hyp.0b013e318293645f

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11395181_Open_Label_Trial_of_Coenzyme_Q10_as_A_Migraine_Preventive

Home

https://www.cefaly.com/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4101101/

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Dr. John Nieters L.Ac, DAOM, is an acupuncturist, Chinese herbalist, functional medicine, writer, teacher, and leader in the community. In this episode, John talks about his experience with the importance of finding your vision and purpose in life, in order to create the right goals for you.

Disclaimer: Dr. John Nieters received his Doctor of Oriental Medicine and Acupuncture degree from Five Branches. His use of “doctor” or “Dr.” in relation to himself solely refers to that degree. Dr. Nieters is a licensed acupuncturist in California. This video is for general informational purposes only. It should not be used to self-diagnose and it is not a substitute for a medical exam, cure, treatment, diagnosis, and prescription or recommendation. It does not create a doctor-patient relationship between Dr. Nieters and you. You should not make any change in your health regimen or diet before first consulting a physician and obtaining a medical exam, diagnosis, and recommendation. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. TheBalancingPoint.net, Alameda Acupuncture, and Dr. John Nieters L.Ac, DAOM are not liable or responsible for any advice, course of treatment, diagnosis or any other information, services or product you obtain through this video or site.