Migraine Headache Blog

Vitamin D continues to be in the news.  A recent Reuters article reports about a Finnish study in the American Journal of Epidemiology about a 27 year study on men and their death rates from heart attacks and strokes.

Of the original 600 men in the study, nearly 500 of them died over the ensuing 27 years.  What the authors noted was that those men with the lowest Vitamin D levels had twice the likelihood of dying from heart attacks and strokes.

Something else the authors noted was that the entire population of the study had “substantially lower” Vitamin D levels then expected.

This correlates with other researchers from the Mayo Clinic who basically state that 93% of people overall are deficient in Vitamin D.  There is a very good reference website on Vitamin D that can be found at www.1-VitaminD.com .

Over the last two or three years, we have really learned a great deal more about Vitamin D.  It is not your simple vitamin that is activated in sunlight and helps out calcium levels and your bones.  In fact, sunlight really may not have much to do with Vitamin D at all.  Consider that in one study in sun-drenched Saudi Arabia, 83% of people had low Vitamin D levels. 

We now know that Vitamin D greatly influences inflammation in the body.  It is one of the most anti-infllammatory mechanisms known (and makes a great anti-inflammatory pain pill - especially in combination with omega 3 fatty acids (fish oil)).

Inflammation determines everything.  Heart disease is nothing more than chronic infllammation.  Cancers are the end result of long standing inflammation. 

Stated quite simply, if your body is inflamed, you get sick.  Sick people get heart disease, strokes, cancers - and - become more prone to getting hormonal problems like migraine headaches.  Yes, for those of you who didn’t read my book, migraines are a hormonal problem.

So whether you have migraines or not, load up yourself and your family with tons of Vitamin D.  The recommended daily intake keeps going up, depending on who you ask.  The days of 400 International Units of Vitamin D daily are long gone.  Now we at 5000 IU’s daily for minimum recommendations.  Even the American Pediatric Society (which is about as mainstream as you can get) is recommending 400 IU’s in newborn babies in their first 24 hours of life.

Vitamin D deficiency is pandemic, universal and almost everyone doesn’t have enough.  Go to www.1-VitaminD.com and get up to speed with the proper recommendations.  It’s cheap, so you can’t complain about cost (about $6/month).

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

According to researchers in a recently published article in the British Medical Journal the answer is “maybe” a small increased incidence of strokes in women who have migraines with aura.

But other commentators think that the association with oral contraceptives is the reason for the increased stroke risk (and other cardiovascular events).  I am in the camp that says that birth control pills cause the strokes, the heart problems AND the migraines - aura or no aura.

What is worse is that once a woman starts birth control pills - even for a short time - she may have permanent effects from it.

Why?  The synthetic, chemically altered hormones in the birth control pills poison the ovaries.  This is just anecdotal observation over the last 20 years show that about half of women do fine with oral contraceptives.  This means that the other half do not.  And they are the ones who show up in doctors’ offices with “female problems”.

Most doctors just dismiss these “female problems” with a paternalistic prescription for anti-depressives - well, you know the drill, that is why you are on this website.

Many, if not most, of these women can be helped by natural (bio-identical) hormones.  This is what your body needs and is not getting enough on its own.  So we supplement these hormones, along with some other supplements - and get decent results.  It is not always perfect, but if your migraines get 80% better, no one is complaining.

So mainsteam medicine is coming around to the fact that birth control pills may have something to do with migraines.  Good for them.  Now they have another 20 years before they catch up with the rest of us.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

The headline in the November issue of Pediatrics describes a pandemic of Vitamin D deficiency among American children. Actually, it is even worse than the headline says.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says that a blood level of 50 nmol/L of Vitamin D is severely deficient, whereas a level of 75 nmol/L is only mildly deficient.

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey examined 5000 children from 2001 to 2006 and based on this data, estimated that 6 million American children were likely to be severely Vitamin D deficient.  That was the good news.

The bad news is that two-thirds of children, an estimated 24 million kids were estimated to be only moderately deficient.  It was even higher in hispanic kids (80%), nearly all black kids (92%) and “only” 59% of white kids were deficient.

Vitamin D is now being shown to be increasingly important in a long list of health issues.  Deficiency, beginning at such a young age, cannot be good.

Dr. Michael F. Holick, professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics and director of the Vitamin D, Skin and Bone Research Laboratory at the Boston University School of Medicine, said that “we estimate that vitamin D deficiency is the most common medical condition in the world.”

“Children should take vitamin D supplements and be less afraid of sensible sun exposure,” Holick said.

Holick would prefer to see the safe upper limit of vitamin D raised. “What I would recommend is that in the first year of life, it should be raised to 5,000 IU per day and for children over the age of 1 and all adults, 10,000 IU a day,” he said.

A good reference site for Vitamin D is www.1-VitaminD.com .

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

For those of you who sincerely believe that the FDA is looking out for the consumer’s best interests - think again. The FDA is nothing more than a bunch of scoundrels closely allied with the big drug companies that keep them in existence.

People taking Armour Thyroid and similar dessicated thyroid hormone prescriptions have been experiencing shortages of for the last year.  It seems that the manufacturers have been shutting down production in anticipation of rumors that the FDA was about to ban the drug and require them to spend hundreds of millions of dollars and delay many years to go through a new drug application (NDA).

A few months ago, Time-Caps lab, a huge manufacturer of generic Armour thyroid, received a ban letter from the FDA telling them that their drug needed an NDA and that they must “cease and desist” production.  They have posted the letter on the internet for the world to see and the wording also indicates the strategy of the FDA to shut down ALL similar thyroid hormone products (Armour, Nature-Throid, Wes-Throid).

Armour thyroid has been around since around 1890 and everyone thought it was “grandfathered” in prior to the passage of the FDA Act in 1934.  In 2000, however, the FDA had a change of direction and decided that they would require every drug in America to have an NDA.  It took a number of years to get around to Armour but the Gestapo has arrived in full force.

Regardless of the politics and big money involved, about a million people take Armour thyroid or similar brands in America.  Millions more take Synthroid and other similar synthetic brands. Synthroid is a lousy drug and barely helps people with thyroid deficiencies.  Armour thyroid works like a champ.

So what does this have to do with migraine headaches?  Most people with migraines, in my observation, have symptoms consistent with thyroid deficiencies.  Many of my customers need to take either iodine or thyroid or both, as a result.  My book that you can download off this website gives directions in detail on how to manage your migraines in the face of low thyroid.

Now that the FDA has disrupted supply of a great drug that benefitted a million people, we are in a bind. My first reaction is to tell people to storm and pillage the FDA, but that is not going to happen anytime soon. 

The easiest alternative is to take iodine in sufficient doses - as long as your Armour dose was a haf-grain or less (30mg).  For higher doses of Armour, there is a dietary supplement called Raw Thyroid that, albeit weaker than Armour, does more or less the same thing as Armour.

You can access Raw Thyroid here:

http://doctor.rejuvenation-science.com/andrewjones1/

For many people, they will need a combination of iodine and Raw Thyroidl.

In the meantime, if you can locate any kind of Armour, order as much as you can, stock up and begin hoarding. The street value of Armour thyroid will be our next black market - thanks to our thoughtful and people-loving FDA.

A good reference on how to manage iodine for low thyroid conditions is www.1-Thyroid.com .

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Women’s Health Insitute of Texas

www.migraine-headaches-information.com

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

A lot has been written about various foods that can trigger migraine headaches.  A few days ago, Yahoo news carried yet another article about citrus from tangerines causing migraines in a young woman.

The article goes on to discuss various other “known” food triggers of migraines: Aged cheese and cheeses containing tyramine, along with salted, cured, processed and canned foods that are high in tyramine.  Alcohol, especially red wine, whiskey and champagne have been identified as triggers.

Finally, they list some “surprise” triggers like: peanuts and peanut butter, potato chips, pizza, fresh fruits like kiwi, plums and raspberries and bread and crackers.

I have no doubt that people experience a migraine when eating certain foods. Understandably these are considered “triggers” and then smart avoidance helps minimize the next migraine.

My point is that there is an underlying mechanism behind the triggers.  Remove what is lurking behind the scenes and then you can enjoy whatever food you want (althought you can still dispense with the potato chips and crackers - they are worthless foods).

It is our theory that hormones, or rather, the deficiency of certain hormones, largely are the cause of migraines in most people, especially women.  Correct the underlying deficiency and the migraines go away.  Not exactly rocket science, but most doctors scoff at the simplicity of this.

Don’t let a simple idea (that mostly works in practice) deter you.  Correct the deficiencies, the migraines disappear and you get your life (and favorite foods) back.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Senior Medical Advisor to the Women’s Health Institute

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

Every now and then, you read something that just turns your perceptions upside down.  Since medical school, it was drummed into me that the diagnosis of cancer - any cancer - was an event of epic proportion.

The diagnosis triggered a waterfall of procedures and aggressive treatment in a race against time.

However, I subscribe to The Douglass Report (something I highly recommend you subscribe to, as well) in which, Dr. Douglass discusses that “many cancers will disappear on their own”.  I just about dropped the newsletter when I read that.

He quotes Dr. Michael Greenough, who says, “At any given, time, everyone has within them between 100 to 10,000 cancer cells. Under normal conditions, when the immune system is strong, these cells are destroyed.”

Then he cites a report published last year in the Archives of Internal Medicine that says that as many as 25 percent of breast cancers will go away on their own if they are not treated.”

Wow.  Let that one sink in.

No one ever told me that and I bet that if you went to a thousand doctors, all one thousand of them would tell you to aggressively treat the diagnosis (I would have put myself in that same category a week ago).

This has major implications when it comes to performing biopsies on suspected masses. It is well known in the surgical world that if you pass a needle through many layers of tissue and subsequently penetrate a tumor mass, that there is a likelihood of spreading the tumor cells through the needle track.  After that, the cat is out of the bag.

Even if you remove the original organ where the tumor mass previously resided, those few cells that escaped in the needle track ended up in other places of the body that can show up a few years later as a metastases.

I am not advocating ignoring suspicious masses, but this is something to seriously think about.

As a natural health doctor, I firmly believe that cancers are a manifestation of an immune-monitoring deficiency - a lapse by the body to perform its natural functions.  That lapse was likely caused by a deficiency of some sort.  Correct the deficiency and the immune function returns and presto - the cancer is eradicated.

Of course, my mainstream colleagues would scream bloody murder at that type of theory. They happily poison people with the latest chemotherapy protocol that I have rarely seen any results of cure or improved lifestyle (or improved life span).  It is a big business and follow the money…

Being very knowledgable in this business, I doubt I will ever get cancer (thanks to large doses of proteases with nattokinase and digestive enzymes as dietary supplements) but then again, you should see my list of supplements.  Perhaps someday, I will publish my own personal supplements list that I take.

At a minimum, everyone on the planet (except for some folks in Japan) is deficient in iodine, magnesium, vitamin D and omega 3 fatty acids (fish oil).  Those four areas should be supplemented.  I recommend this for my migraine sufferers as well.

Women with symptoms of migraines are also deficient in certain hormones and should supplement those.  My book will describe exactly what to take.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

www.PMScure.com

The sky is falling!  If you read the newspapers and watch national TV news, you would be thinking that we are going to die tomorrow from the latest flu scare.  Hogwash! (so to speak).
Been to an internationaly airport lately? You will see swarms of workers, especially the government workers,  wearing surgical masks.  Of course, the masks don’t do a lick of good. But someone is making a pile of money selling masks.
If you believe the World Health Organization (WHO), then official figures show that 52,000 people have been afflicted with this strain and that 230 people have died from it (mostly in Mexico and the US).

Let’s put the current H1N1 flu “epidemic” in perspective. Compared to the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, 20% - 40% of the world’s population were affected and estimated 50 MILLION people died.  In the US, about 675,000 people died. That was a serious flu.

What about other pandemics? How about the Asian flu in 1957?  This was about a tenth as bad as the flu in 1918.  About 70,000 people died from that one.

The Hong Kong flu erupted in 1968.  This affected primarily the infirm and elderly, killing 33,800 in the US.

Remember the Avian Flu threat of 1997?  Just like the current scare, newspaper headlines were saturated with dire predictions.  SIX people in the entire world died from it.

Of course, the public health authorities will take credit for suppressing spread of the disease and their hot shot vaccines will save the world, etc.  The efficacy of the vaccine is in doubt, year in and year out, with a consistent death toll of about  700 - 900 people that die every year from the flu, unofficially.

I no longer recommend flu vaccines for anyone.  Vaccines usually “protect” against the wrong strain and have dubious “protection” at best.  The American population, especially children and more especially, infants, are receiving a barrage of vaccines that probably do more harm than good.  Can you say “autism”?

In the end, it is all about money.  Vaccine manufacturers, in conjunction with the FDA and CDC, scare the bejabbers out of everyone to take their dangerous and costly vaccines.

If you are going to get the flu, you get the flu. If your immune system is working, you will survive and do fine. Infirm people with chronic health problems and the elderly don’t do well in any kind of new stress/disease situation.

Rather than advocate vaccines, we should look at the underlying health situation.  Why does someone have a chronic disease?  I maintain that chronic health problems are the result of a deficiency of something, either caused by dietary insufficiency, alteration in digestion or some combination thereof.

If your car is getting bad gasoline or the fuel line is plugged up, don’t be surprised if your engine doesn’t work right.  If you fix the fuel and fuel usage in your car, imagine how much better your engine runs.

Don’t lose a lot of sleep worrying about H1N1 flu this year.  Work on your diet, nutrition and dietary supplements instead.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

It is not unusual for Oprah Winfrey to be in the news.  Recently she had a show on the benefits of bio-identical hormones. Oprah has long been a champion of natural hormones (another way of saying “bio-identical” - just easier to type!) and has featured advocate Suzanne Somers more than once.

Natural hormones are important in the treatment of many maladies suffered by women, including migraine headaches.
What was interesting was the fallout in the mainstream media reflecting the kneejerk views of maintream media and the big drug companies (who advertise in the media).  Newsweek magazine carried a front page hit piece on Oprah that exemplified this attack.

There is a wonderful rebuttal by Dr. Jeffrey Dach on  Wellsphere.com.  Here is the link to his blog article.

It is the usual reactions we see from mainstream medicine and their big drug company masters.  They love to say that natural hormones are not studied, not safe, not regulated and not prescribed.  They are wrong on all accounts.

What natural hormones don’t have are patents because they are found in nature.  And anything found in nature cannot be patented.  Nevertheless, some drug companies have patented some process of manufacturing or delivering a natural hormone and  got that into a prescription format.  Climara patch is a good example.

Mainstream medicine really has no idea that the usual prescribed synthetic hormones are just bastardized versions of hormones.  And yes, synthetic hormones that are not human in form are poisons.  A half century of synthetic hormone replacement therapy, in conjunction with birth control pills has done significant damage to the last four generations of women.

On the other hand, natural hormones are exactly the same thing as the hormones that your body is supposed to me making.  By definition, they cannot be harmful, unless our Maker intended for the human species to last only one generation.

Natural hormones are dose responsive.  This means that the more you take, the bigger the dose and the effects are known and predictable.  Not harmful - just predictable.  This is why medical students take first year physiology and bio-chemistry classes.  We studied all this and know how it works.  I studied this when I was in medical school 23 years ago.

But I was also taught that Provera was the same thing as progesterone.  It isn’t.  Provera has progestin-like effects but it is NOT progesterone.  It took me 15 years to figure that out.  Many of my mainstream colleagues still believe that Provera is progesterone.

I know the battles I had to face with my mainstream medical colleagues regarding the danger of synthetic, chemically altered hormones that most of you have taken over the years (including birth control pills).  Oprah is facing the same thing in Newsweek and other mainstream media outlets now.

Oprah is right on.  Keep up the good work.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

It is no secret that Vitamin D deficiency is pandemic.  Even the New England Journal of Medicine agrees in their headline, “Vitamin D Deficiency is Pandemic“.

As Vitamin D is getting more attention with recent studies showing its effectiveness in a myriad of conditions from one of Mother Nature’s best anti-inflammation remedies to improving heart disease and cancers.  Basically, your body needs Vitamin D to maintain good health.  When you don’t have enough Vitamin D, your body falls apart and becomes susceptible to just about everything bad.

I just saw a study that showed no ill effects from taking a DAILY dose of 50,000 IU per day.  We used to recommend 50,000 per week.  That same study now recommends safely taking 10,000 IU per day.

If you thought that just getting a few minutes of sunshine exposure every day was sufficient for your daily Vitamin D needs, think again.  Even in sun drenched Saudi Arabia, one study showed 83% of people were Vitaimin D deficient.

What is interesting is that the recommendations for daily minimum supplementation continues to increase.  Only a couple of years ago, we all believed 400 IU was sufficient.  Then the recommendation changed to 1000 IU.  Later it became 2000 IU.  Last year it got bumped up to 5000 IU.

I still see people who have taken Vitamin D supplements in the 400 IU range for several years who are profoundly deficient. We load those folks up with daily 50,000 IU doses and then back off to 5000 IU per day.  Although, now seeing the 10,000 IU daily recommendation, we will be moving towards doubling our recos.

By the way, Vitamin D is one of my recommendations for people with migraine headaches. There are several more recommendations on my list, of course, with Vitamin D being just one.  A good vitamin D product is Vitamin D5000 by Natural Living.  You can get order it at www.VitaminD5000.com .

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

Everyone knows that cholesterol is bad for you, right?  At least, that is what every other television commercial says.  Your doctor has been saying that for years and now the big drug companies are getting into the act.

Every big drug company has their favorite “statin” drug.  You know, the miracle statins that began with Merck’s Mevacor about 20 years ago that reduce your cholesterol levels?

But has anybody actually proven that cholesterol CAUSES heart disease?  It doesn’t.  Hugely elevated cholesterol  is merely a symptom of something that is not right.

When I was going through medical school about 25 years ago, we were taught that “normal” cholesterol levels were between 250 - 300.  By the time I finished residency, it was 200 - 250.  Some years later it became 150 - 200.  Now it is some ridiculous level around 100.  This is total cholesterol, not LDL.

Did you know that low cholesterol is associated with a higher death rate? Elderly females who have a cholesterol level below 155 have a 5.2 fold higher death rate as compared to women with a cholesterol level of 272.  You read that right.

The lower the LDL, the higher the risk of Parkinson’s Disease. An LDL less than 92 is associated with a 260% increased risk of Parkinson’s.
There are five major studies on the statins. No study showed a dramatic decrease in mortality (death) in those that took a statin. The average of the studies showed a less than one percent (0.775%) death rate that those who didn’t take statins.

So why is your TV blaring about statins? Money.

In the US alone in 2004 (which is many sales records ago), Lipitor brought in $7.7 billion.  Zocor brought ini $4.5 billion.

Statins probably, no they do, cause more harm than good.  There is no measurable good with statins.  It is a complete fraud perpetrated on innocent consumers like you.  The big drug companies, in cahoots with the FDA, brainwash doctors on this garbage of how it helps your cholestol.

Let’s talk about cholesterol.  You need it.  You cannot survive without it.  You need lots of it.

What is cholesterol good for?

• It is a precursor to Vitamin D production in your skin.
• It is necessary for fat and mineral absorption.
• Every cell wall in your body needs it or your cells fall apart.
• Cholesterol forms the myelin sheath for your nerves.
• Over 50% of the dry weight of your cerebral cortex is cholesterol.
• It is important for serotonin receptors.
• Your immune system cannot function without it.
• It is necessary for the production of all your adrenal hormones.

The list goes on…

What do Statins do?

• They kill older women 5 times faster.
• Statins cause heart failure.
• They block CoQ10 production, which in turn, sets you up for nerve diseases, macular degeneration and maybe Parkinson’s disease.
• Statins cause muscle pain and weakness in at least 5% of users.
• Statins may induce dementia. (What about all that cholesterol that comprises your brain?)
• All cholesterol drugs are associated with higher rates of cancer.
• Breast cancer is increased 1500% in statin users. (That is 15 times normal).
• Statins disrupt all the adrenal hormones.
• Numerous articles report an increased rate of depression in statin users.

I think you get the idea that statins are bad for you.  If you like conspiracy theories, it doesn’t get much better than the FDA, big drug companies and mainstream medicine collaborating on promoting statins for the last 20 years as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Statins are a fraud.

The same people pushing the statins are the ones telling you that there is no cure for migraine headaches.

We know better about statins and we know better about migraines.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com